IEA Report Underscores Urgency of Fossil Fuel Phaseout as Electricity Demand Surges

The International Energy Agency on Wednesday released a major report showing that the world's nations are not on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with 2030 targets and doing so will be made more difficult by growing demand for electricity.

The 398-page report, World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2024, is the latest in the IEA's flagship annual series, which is heavily cited by stakeholders across the world.

The report found that while renewables are entering the energy mix at an "unprecedented" rate—a record 560 gigawatts came online globally in 2023—the world's nations are on track to reduce emissions only by 3% from 2023 levels by 2030, rather than the 33% needed to meet agreed-upon targets. It also finds that the path to net zero by 2050 is "increasingly narrow."

"The world has the need and the capacity to go much faster," the report says.

The challenges to decarbonization include an increase in demand in electricity, especially in China and India.

This year's WEO projects a 6% higher rate in global electricity demand by 2035 than did last year's, with the surge "driven by light industrial consumption, electric mobility, cooling, and data centers and [artificial intelligence]."

While renewable development and electrification generally help bend down the emissions curve, experts warn that renewables only do so if they replace fossil fuel use, and the electricity needs to be powered cleanly.

"What the WEO is showing is that a market-led approach is leading to renewable energy being added on top of fossil fuels, rather than driving a rapid transition away from them," Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International (OCI), told Common Dreams. "That's why we need more direct intervention to actually phase down the fossils and boost renewables to make up the difference."

The growth in electricity demand raises the bar for climate action. Dave Jones, a director at Ember, an energy think tank, toldThe New York Times that "with higher energy use, even fast renewables growth doesn't translate to fast falls in carbon dioxide emissions."

The new WEO projects coal to decline more gradually than had been previously expected due to the rising electricity demand. This is true not only in China and India but also the United States, thanks partly to the inordinate amounts of energy used by AI data centers.

"With established technology companies and AI startups making major investments, a sharp rise in electricity consumption by data centers looks inevitable," the WEO says.

Still, Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, celebrated the overall move toward electrification and drew attention to the WEO finding that solar and wind would power far more of the world's electricity by 2035.

The key problem highlighted by the new WEO is the continued reliance on fossil fuels, according to an OCI statement: "The WEO lays bare how much work is left to do for governments to follow through with the policies and funding needed for a livable planet."

OCI calls for stop to all oil, gas, and coal extraction beyond existing fields and mines. The group also opposes liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, which the IEA authors raised as a point of concern in the WEO.

The report says that "an unprecedented volume of LNG is due to come online in the second-half of the 2020s, led by a near-doubling of export capacity in the United States and Qatar."

The WEO authors project that a surplus of LNG will depress gas prices internationally, which could affect the uptake of renewables.

"Clean technology costs are coming down, but maintaining and accelerating momentum behind their deployment in a lower fuel-price world is a different proposition," they wrote.

Rees of OCI said the LNG glut could lead to "displacement of renewable solutions like wind, solar, and heat pumps" and condemned U.S. policymakers for pushing LNG exports "when there's no room for it in a livable climate, and no need for it even in scenarios far off track from climate safety."

Though the IEA's projections show that the world is not doing enough to tackle climate change, there is no guarantee that even the modest progress assumed in the projections will come to pass. Big Oil executives have cast doubt on the idea that fossil fuel use and climate emissions will peak by the end of the decade, as the IEA projects.