Cite report
IEA (2025), Global Energy Review 2025, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025, Licence: CC BY 4.0
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Key findings
- Global energy demand grew by 2.2% in 2024 – faster than the average rate over the past decade. Demand for all fuels and technologies expanded in 2024. The increase was led by the power sector as electricity demand surged by 4.3%, well above the 3.2% growth in global GDP, driven by record temperatures, electrification and digitalisation. Renewables accounted for the largest share of the growth in global energy supply (38%), followed by natural gas (28%), coal (15%), oil (11%) and nuclear (8%).
- Emerging and developing economies accounted for over 80% of global energy demand growth. In China, growth in energy demand slowed to under 3% in 2024, half the rate in 2023 and well below China’s average annual growth of 4.3% in recent years. Nevertheless, China still saw the largest demand growth in absolute terms of any country in 2024. India saw the second-largest rise in energy demand in absolute terms – more than the increase in all advanced economies combined.
- Advanced economies also saw a notable return to growth in energy demand after several years of declines, with demand rising by almost 1%. The United States saw the third-largest absolute demand growth in 2024 after China and India. The European Union returned to growth for the first time since 2017 (aside from the post-Covid rebound in 2021).
- Global oil demand growth slowed markedly in 2024, in line with the IEA’s forecast. Oil’s share of total energy demand fell below 30% for the first time ever, 50 years after peaking at 46%. Demand for oil rose by 0.8% in 2024, compared with a 1.9% increase in 2023. However, trends varied between sectors and regions. Oil demand from global road transport fell slightly, driven by declines in China (-1.8%) and advanced economies (-0.3%). Oil demand from aviation and petrochemicals grew.
- Natural gas saw the strongest demand growth among fossil fuels. Demand increased by 2.7% in 2024, rising by 115 billion cubic metres (bcm), compared with an average of around 75 bcm annually over the past decade. China had the largest absolute growth in gas demand in 2024 of over 7% (30 bcm), with growth also strong in other emerging and developing economies in Asia. Gas demand expanded by around 2% (20 bcm) in the United States. Consumption grew modestly in the European Union, notably for industrial use.
- Global coal demand rose by 1%. Power generation was the main driver of growth as high temperatures pushed up electricity consumption for cooling. Intense heatwaves drove coal use higher in both China and India, which together represented the large majority of the global demand increase of around 65 million tonnes of coal equivalent (Mtce). China remained the largest coal consumer globally, accounting for a record 58% of global coal use.
- Global electricity consumption rose by nearly 1 100 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024, more than twice the annual average increase over the past decade. The increase – more than Japan’s annual electricity consumption – was the largest ever, outside of years when the global economy rebounded from recession. China made up more than half of the global increase in electricity demand, but the rise was broad-based, with growth of 4% in other emerging and developing economies. Electricity demand reached a new high in advanced economies.
- Rising global electricity use was driven by factors such as increasing cooling demand resulting from extreme temperatures, growing consumption by industry, the electrification of transport, and the expansion of the data centre sector. Electricity use in buildings accounted for nearly 60% of overall growth in 2024. The installed capacity of data centres globally increased by an estimated 20%, or around 15 gigawatts (GW), mostly in the United States and China. Meanwhile, the continued growth in the uptake of electric vehicles resulted in a rise in electricity use in transport. Global sales of electric cars rose by over 25%, surpassing 17 million units and accounting for one-fifth of all car sales, in line with the IEA’s projections for 2024.
- In 2024, 80% of the growth in global electricity generation was provided by renewable sources and nuclear power. Together, they contributed 40% of total generation for the first time, with renewables alone supplying 32%. New renewables installations hit record levels for the 22nd consecutive year, with around 700 GW of total renewable capacity added in 2024, nearly 80% of which was solar PV. Generation from solar PV and wind increased by a record 670 TWh, while generation from natural gas rose by 170 TWh and coal by 90 TWh. In the European Union, the share of generation provided by solar PV and wind surpassed the combined share of coal and gas for the first time. In the United States, solar PV and wind’s share rose to 16%, overtaking that of coal. In China, solar PV and wind reached nearly 20% of total generation.
- In 2024, over 7 GW of nuclear power capacity was brought online, 33% more than in 2023. The new capacity added was the fifth-highest level in the past three decades. Electricity generation from nuclear in 2024 rose by 100 TWh, equalling the largest increase this century outside of the post-Covid rebound. Construction starts for nuclear power plants grew by 50% in 2024, exclusively using Chinese and Russian designs.
- Growth in energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continues to decouple from global economic growth. Emissions growth slowed to 0.8% in 2024, while the global economy expanded by more than 3%. The global increase of 300 million tonnes of CO2 was influenced by record high temperatures. If weather in 2024 had remained consistent with 2023, itself the second-hottest year on record, about half of the increase in global emissions would have been avoided. Still, the deployment of solar PV, wind, nuclear, electric cars and heat pumps since 2019 now prevents 2.6 billion tonnes of CO2 annually, the equivalent of 7% of global emissions. Most emissions growth in 2024 came from emerging and developing economies outside China. Emissions growth in China slowed in 2024, though per-capita emissions are now 16% higher than in advanced economies and nearly twice the global average. Emissions in advanced economies fell by 1.1% to 10.9 billion tonnes in 2024 – a level seen 50 years ago, when their GDP was more than three times smaller.
- Energy intensity improvements continued to slow in 2024. After improving at an average rate of around 2% annually between 2010 and 2019, energy intensity improvements slowed to 1.2% per year between 2019 and 2023 and only 1% in 2024. Key reasons for this recent slowdown include investment- and manufacturing-intensive post-Covid growth in major emerging and developing economies such as China and India; higher energy demand due to extreme temperatures; and a trend of poor growth in hydropower output that was only partially reversed in 2024, leading to more consumption of less-efficient fuels in some regions.