In his foreword to the 2024 edition of the annual report of the International Energy Agency (IEA), its director, Fatih Birol, points out that the energy sector has now entered a turbulent period, with conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, increasingly frequent climate disturbances and unstable markets making energy supplies more fragile. But he also notes the growth in the production of ‘clean’ energies (with low CO2 emissions) , particularly electricity.
IEA (International Energy Agency), World Energy Outlook 2024, Paris: IEA, October 2024, 398 p.
Three themes run through the seven chapters of this report: energy security in a fractured geopolitical context; support for the growth of clean energies; political uncertainties (electoral in particular), technical uncertainties (speed of progress) and climatic ones (weather disruption). The first chapter presents three scenarios for world energy, to 2030 and 2050 — with annual growth of 2.5% in world gross domestic product (GDP).
The Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS), based on recent developments in national policies and energy demand, assumes low growth in energy demand (0.5% per year, compared with 1.4% over the last decade) until 2050, and a tripling of clean energy consumption, but with 58% of energy coming from fossil fuels. The Announced Pledges Scenario (APS) takes into account the ability of governments to meet their energy targets; the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (NZE) scenario, the most ambitious, assumes an acceleration in energy decarbonisation by 2050, wi
