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World Energy Outlook 2025

Author(s) : IEA

Type of monograph: Report

Summary

This year’s edition comes amid major shifts in global energy policies and markets, and acute geopolitical strains. Governments are reaching different conclusions about the best ways to tackle concerns about energy security, affordability and sustainability.

The Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS) and the Current Policies Scenario (CPS) present two views on how the energy system may evolve, building on different assumptions regarding today’s policies and technologies. Both scenarios see continued increases in energy demand to 2050, albeit at different speeds, with emerging market and developing economies driving the increase, led by India and Southeast Asia.
  
Differences in the pace at which new technologies are brought into the energy system are reflected in the trajectories for fossil fuels. In the CPS, oil and natural gas demand continue to grow to mid-century, although coal goes into decline before 2030. In the STEPS, coal use peaks earlier than in the CPS and oil demand flattens by the end of the decade, but natural gas demand continues to grow into the 2030s, as a wave of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports brings downward pressure on prices.
 
The emissions trajectory in the CPS is consistent with warming of almost 3 °C by 2100, whereas lower levels of emissions in the STEPS keep this to around 2.5 °C, slightly higher than the 2024 version of the STEPS. In the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE Scenario), warming peaks around 2050 at about 1.65 °C and declines slowly after that, largely due to active measures to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The resilience of energy infrastructure in the face of extreme weather and other hazards is becoming more critical.
 
Electricity plays a growing role in meeting energy service demand in all scenarios, supplied with rising shares of generation from renewables. Peak electricity demand rises around 40% by 2035 in the STEPS, with similar trends in the other scenarios, largely due to increased demand for cooling. Data centres and AI account for less than 10% of global growth in electricity demand, but this is a larger factor in the United States where a large share of new data centres are located. 

Today, around 730 million people still live without electricity, and nearly 2 billion rely on polluting cooking methods. As things stand, the world is not on track to close this huge gap in the provision of modern energy. Our new analysis draws on lessons from countries that have achieved rapid progress and outlines a new pathway to universal access, reaching this milestone in 2035 for electricity and 2040 for clean cooking.

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Format PDF

Pages: 519 p.

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Details

  • Original title: World Energy Outlook 2025
  • Record ID : 30034398
  • Languages: English
  • Subject: Figures, economy, Developing country, Environment
  • Publication: IEA (International Energy Agency) - France
  • Publication date: 2025/11

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