By Paul Homewood
As usual, ignore the spin from the IEA, and look at what the full report actually says:
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025
The whole report can be easily summed up with this opening chart:
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It’s the same old pattern we see every year – global energy demand continues to grow, last year by 2.2%. And over half of this increase came from fossil fuels, outstripping renewables, which we find are never able to meet all of the extra demand, never mind start to supplant coal, oil and gas. This despite the enormous investment in renewables and the “supposed” fact that they are cheaper.
Economic growth was in line with other years in the last decade or so:
Energy demand grew strongly across Asia, but also surprisingly in the US as well. The sluggish growth in Europe and Japan is more an indication of stagnating economies than energy efficiency:
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Given all of the above, it is little wonder than emissions of CO2 have carried on climbing, up 0.8% last year:
Absurdly the IEA claim that “Rising global electricity use was driven by factors such as increasing
cooling demand resulting from extreme temperatures. Electricity use in buildings accounted
for nearly 60% of overall growth in 2024”
No, electricity use in buildings in countries like India and China have risen because it is more readily available now. The weather has always been hot there, but now people can afford air conditioning and the grids are better equipped to supply power for them.
Electricity supply will continue to increase in the developing world, and their citizens will continue to consume it. That is why that CO2 graph will carry on rising for a long time yet.