IEEJ：February ©IEEJ 2022
Special Bulletin
A Japanese Perspective on the International Energy Landscape (572)February 17, 2022

At the 12th IEA-IEF-OPEC Symposium on Energy Outlooks
Ken Koyama, PhD
Chief Economist, Managing Director
The Institute of Energy Economics, JapanOn February 16, the 12th IEA-IEF-OPEC Symposium on Energy Outlooks took place at
the headquarters of the International Energy Forum in Riyadh. The annual symposium has been held
since the first one in 2011 for dialogue between oil producing and consuming countries.
Representatives of the three international organizations named in the title participated in thesymposium along with government officials, energy industry people and experts from majorcountries, holding vigorous discussions. This symposium has been designed for the International
Energy Agency, representing oil consuming countries, and the Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries, representing oil producing countries, to frankly discuss matters of interest tothem as mediated by the IEF established for talks between oil producing and consuming countries.
I participated in the annual symposium for the first time in two years since the 10th one inFebruary 2020, just before the COVID-19 outbreak expanded into a pandemic. Since March 2020, I
had refrained from traveling overseas for international conferences. The participation in the latest
IEA-IEF-OPEC symposium represented my first overseas travel for a real international conference
to have face-to-face talks in two years, leading me to feel a surge of emotion. In the past two years,
the COVID-19 crisis exerted great impacts on energy markets, followed by a great wave of carbon
neutrality declarations, simultaneous energy price hikes and the current Ukraine crisis that has led
energy geopolitics to attract global interest. Great changes have thus come in international energy
markets in the past two years. It is important that participants in the symposium discussed thesechanges and key current challenges. In the following, I would like to comment on impressive points
at the symposium.
First, energy security was taken up as a central topic. As a matter of course, the COVID-19
pandemic’s impacts on international energy markets and the significance of carbon neutrality
initiatives were also frequently cited as key matters of interest to speakers. For most of thesymposium participants, however, urgently important topics were the simultaneous energy pricehikes rattling international energy markets since late last year and their impacts on global andnational economies and civic life.
Factors behind the energy price hikes include not only the tightening supply-demandbalance as a fundamental factor but also the potential structural tightening of the balance due toinvestment shortages in transition to decarbonization, the growing influence of energy geopolitics assymbolized by the current Ukraine crisis and other issues that lead us to become conscious of thesignificance of energy security.
My talks with energy policy and industry stakeholders and experts in the world at online
international conferences focused on the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 and on prospects
and challenges regarding carbon neutrality goals in 2021. As international energy markets have cometo a turning point, however, major speakers and moderators at the latest symposium emphasized the1IEEJ：February ©IEEJ 2022
significance of energy security and energy market stabilization initiatives.
This change is the first impressive point for me. This reflects that the energy price hikes, aswell as energy geopolitical factors and complicated market conditions behind the hikes, haveincreased uncertainties and loomed as significant and serious issues.
Even in such situation, however, carbon neutrality initiatives should not be ignored. It
remains an extremely important challenge to promote initiatives to realize carbon neutrality pledgedby all major countries in the world as a long-term goal. This point was basically reflected in thesymposium. At the same time, however, I think that the energy market destabilization and energy
price hikes led symposium participants to become keenly conscious that how to promote transition tocarbon neutrality smoothly and stably while holding down costs or burdens would be extremely
important.
While the symposium featured high interest in energy security, it was interesting that talks
at the symposium indicated that the issue of energy security has grown more diversified andcomplicated. The most important urgent challenge regarding energy security is the growing Ukraine
crisis accompanied by potential energy supply disruptions, which is a rather classic energy security
issue. The significance of Russia as energy supplier, Europe’s heavy dependence on Russian energy
sources and concern on a grave development in which geopolitical risks would lead to supply
disruptions are the biggest matters of interest regarding energy security at present.
In addition to the classic issue, new energy security issues are growing important,including investment shortages and the structural tightening of the energy supply-demand balance inthe world in transition to decarbonization. If international supply chains are developed for bluehydrogen/ammonia, stable supply of the new clean fuels through international trade will loom as anew issue. Other new energy security issues include electricity supply security that is growing
important regarding electrification as a key to decarbonization, as well as stable supply of criticalminerals that will play a decisive role in promoting renewable energy and electrification. Given these
new energy security issues, the symposium focused on energy security.
The discussions at the symposium also demonstrated great interest in nuclear energy.
Multiple speakers made presentations on the future course, potential and roles of nuclear energy,
followed by numerous participants’ statements on the roles of nuclear energy. This indicates that
nuclear energy has been highlighted as a stable baseload power source contributing to stableelectricity supply under decarbonization initiatives. I was impressed that in the world where energy
security is given priority, nuclear energy has been revisited as a key option. Symposium participants
pointed to new important developments such as the European Union’s positioning of nuclear energy
as sustainable investment category in its taxonomy, France’s announcement of new nuclear plant
construction plans and globally promoted initiatives to develop small modular reactors. My
impression is that talks on these developments at the symposium represent a new move that had notbeen seen during meetings on future global energy issues in the past decade.
As noted at the outset, my first participation in a real international conference in two years
led me to feel that deep talks that cannot be realized in online meetings are important and valuable. Itwas impressed upon me that such real talks and networking would remain indispensable fordiscussing important energy issues in the world and exploring solutions.

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