Renewables will cover almost all of global electricity demand growth out to 2025, becoming the world’s top source of electricity within three years, new figures reveal.
Carbon Brief analysis of figures in the International Energy Agency (IEA) electricity market report 2023 shows that renewables, combined with resurgent nuclear power, will more than cover growth in electricity demand between 2022 and 2025.
This means clean-energy sources will start displacing fossil fuels. As a result, global power-sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will plateau or decline, despite rapidly rising demand.
Electricity demand
The IEA notes that global GDP growth projections have been revised down for almost every country due to the energy crisis, with the UK taking a particularly big hit.
Nevertheless, it says that global electricity demand growth will rebound strongly in 2023. It says another 2,500-terawatt hours (TWh) of demand will be added by 2025, predominantly in Asia.
This 9% growth would take overall demand to 29,281TWh. It is equivalent to adding an EU-sized chunk of demand to the global electricity system – in only three years. The IEA says growth will be concentrated in Asia.
By 2025, China will account for a third of global electricity demand, up from 5% in 1990 and 25% in 2015. Combined with strong growth in other parts of Asia, by 2025 the region will make up more than half of global electricity demand, the IEA says, “for the first time in history”.
Although electricity use will grow steadily in Europe and North America, their share of global demand will decline as Asia’s expands.
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Source: Carbon Brief
