The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By Robert Cyran

HOUSTON, March 14 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Sports fans have the Super Bowl and Big Energy has its annual hoopla in Houston, where some 10,000 industry folks gather to celebrate the resources used to power the world. The latest CERAWeek event, wrapping up on Friday, was particularly buoyant, with the United States reigning as the planet’s largest producer and President Donald Trump back in the White House. A triumphalist mood eclipsed the international flavor of recent years, while attendees talked up the indispensability of fossil fuels. It’s an idea as improbable as an Elvis sighting.

The new U.S. administration marks a distinct departure from the green push under President Joe Biden. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright declared during his keynote speech that climate change was an acceptable side effect of modernity, promising that Trump would end “irrational, quasi-religious” policies favoring solar and wind power.

Conveniently overlooked was that even though conference host Texas backed Trump’s Republican Party, it also has experienced enormous solar expansion while batteries stabilize its grid. Energy from the sun grew from virtually nothing a decade ago to 25% of the Lone Star State’s production during last summer’s peak hours. And contrary to Wright’s warnings about the cost of renewables, electricity prices in Texas increased slower than total inflation over that stretch.

In fact, the shift in tone at this year’s S&P Global-sponsored gathering was so drastic that Amin Nasser sounded moderate. The CEO of $1.7 trillion Saudi Aramco 2222.SE said there was a greater chance of long-dead singer Elvis Presley making an appearance than the transition to green power working. He at least promoted efficiency-driven reductions in emissions.

Both Wright and Nasser were talking their own country’s books. Saudi Arabia is a huge crude exporter. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil producer and its biggest consumer, so naturally is home to more acute concerns about whether to champion or replace geologically formed fuels. For now, it’s a supportive spirit rhetorically reciprocated by petroleum companies who stand to benefit from White House decisions about access to giant untapped fields. Bosses of both BP BP.L and Shell SHEL.L referred to the Trump-branded Gulf of America instead of calling it the Gulf of Mexico.

Perhaps friendlier policy will provide a short-term fillip. But the gloomier reality is that oil consumption likely will grow by less than 1% this year, according to the International Energy Agency. Demand in China, until recently the biggest source, has plateaued.

It’s true that power-hungry data centers feeding artificial intelligence advances in rich countries and the spread of air conditioning in poor ones will lift electricity needs. The IEA forecasts, however, that low-emissions sources, particularly solar, will meet such growth. With renewable costs falling while oil gets harder to find, the industry should be thinking less about invincibility and more about their long-term reservation at heartbreak hotel.

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CONTEXT NEWS

CERAWeek, the annual energy conference sponsored by S&P Global, took place in Houston from March 10 to March 14.

(Editing by Jonathan Guilford, Jeffrey Goldfarb, Pranav Kiran and Maya Nandhini)

((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on CYRAN/
robert.cyran@thomsonreuters.com))