THERE will be no energy transition and demand for burning fossil fuels will only rise with the power needs of AI, US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum vowed at a Gulf energy summit today.

Mr Burgum’s remarks underline a growing divide between President Donald Trump’s United States, which has expressed scepticism about the reality of climate change, and its “peer competitor” China.

“The demand for power is going to go up and up,” Mr Burgum said. “Today’s the day to announce that there is no energy transition. There is only energy addition.”

He spoke welcoming Abu Dhabi National Oil Co CEO Sultan al-Jaber’s pledge opening the emirate’s International Petroleum Exhibition yesterday that the energy market needed “reinforcement not replacement.” Mr Jaber controversially claimed when chairing the Cop28 climate conference in 2023 that there was no need to phase out fossil fuel use to limit global warming — comments he later had to withdraw.

Mr Burgum said some people saw “the climate as an existential threat” but the US did not. It was focused on “two substantial threats:” the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon and the “free world” losing the “AI arms race,” to win which “you need chips, you need software models and you need more electricity.”

Highlighting Iran’s nuclear programme may have reflected Mr Burgum’s audience of Gulf sheikhdoms, whose hostility to Iran has long assisted US divide-and-rule strategy in the Middle East.

But the reference to the so-called free world being in an AI arms race clearly pointed to US fears that China is developing an edge in advanced technologies.

China dominates renewable energy supply chains worldwide, and the US and some European politicians have suggested green transition risks making the West dependent on Beijing.

Mr Burgum’s comments reflect a regression towards reliance on polluting fossil fuels across US allies as developing countries move on.

Renewable energy overtook coal as the leading source of electricity worldwide for the first time in the first half of this year — thanks above all to China, which added more solar and wind capacity last year than the rest of the world combined. China was able to reduce fossil fuel energy generation by 2 per cent despite rising electricity demand overall.

But other developing countries including India showed a slight fall in fossil fuel demand due to a shift to renewables — while both the United States and European Union increased their fossil fuel generation both absolutely and proportionally compared to renewables in 2024, according to a report from the International Energy Agency.