The 'Age of Electricity' is coming, as fossil fuels are about to peak: IEA October 16, 2024

Negative wholesale electricity prices are becoming more common as more wind and solar polar come online and don't always reduce output when demand falls© Ina FASSBENDER

By AFP - Agence France Presse

The 'Age of Electricity' is coming, as fossil fuels are about to peak: IEA

By Nathalie ALONSO

More than half of the world's electricity will be generated by low-emission sources before 2030, but the deployment of clean energy is “far from uniform” across the globe, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday.

Demand for oil, gas, and coal is still projected to peak by the end of the decade, the IEA said in its annual World Energy Outlook report.

“In the history of energy, we have witnessed the Age of Coal and the Age of Oil,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.

“Now we are rapidly entering the Age of Electricity, which will define the global energy system going forward and will increasingly be based on clean sources of electricity,” he said.

The report states that clean energy “is entering the energy system at an unprecedented pace,” with 560 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity added by 2023.

Nearly $2 trillion in investments are going into clean energy projects each year, almost double the amount spent on fossil fuel supplies, according to the Paris-based agency.

“Together with nuclear power, which is the subject of renewed interest in many countries, low-emission sources are expected to generate more than half of the world's electricity before 2030,” it said.

But, the IEA noted that the deployment of clean energy “is far from uniform across technologies and countries.”

The growing electricity demand is driven by industry, electric vehicles, air conditioning, and data centers linked to the rise of artificial intelligence.

Despite the “growing momentum behind clean energy transitions,” the IEA said that the world “is still a long way from a trajectory aligned” with its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

The goal of net-zero emissions is crucial to meeting the Paris Agreement's objective of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.

The IEA report comes a month before Azerbaijan hosts the annual UN climate conference, COP29, in Baku from November 11 to 22.

At COP28, held in Dubai last year, nations pledged to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. They also promised to abandon fossil fuels.

The IEA said that renewable energy generation capacity should increase from 4,250 GW today to almost 10,000 GW by 2030, as the costs of most clean technologies are falling.

Although this falls short of the COP28 tripling target, it is “more than enough” to cover the growth in global electricity demand and “push coal-fired generation into decline.”

China was responsible for 60% of the new renewable capacity added to the world last year.

By the early 2030s, the country's solar power generation will exceed the total electricity demand of the United States today, according to the report.

In many developing countries, however, “policy uncertainty and the high cost of capital are holding back clean energy projects.”

Global carbon dioxide emissions are set to peak “imminently,” but current policies still leave the world on a path that will lead to a 2.4°C rise in average temperatures by 2100, the IEA warned.

“2024 showed that electricity demand is insatiable,” said Dave Jones, director of the global insights program at Ember, an energy think tank.

“This means that global coal generation would fall less quickly than previously expected. This means that the world is not yet making the transition away from fossil fuels and reducing CO2 emissions in the energy sector,” he added.

Despite a record deployment of clean energy, two-thirds of the increase in global energy demand was met by fossil fuels last year, the IEA said.

“We will still need oil (for) many years to come,” Birol said at a press conference.

Although demand is expected to reach a plateau before 2030, “that doesn't mean it will decrease immediately,” he said.

“But we do see a peaking and weakening of global oil demand growth,” added Birol, who said the prospect of more ample supplies of fossil fuels would ease pressure on prices.

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