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Electricity 2026 Reliability
Largescale outages amid system instability, equipment failures and weather impacts As the Age of Electricity evolves, with steadily rising electrification rates and electricity demand, blackouts can impact a vast part of economies and social life. Outages induced by operational failures, technical error, or climate-driven events illustrate the importance of redundancy, resilience, and thorough oversight. The following list of outage incidents in 2025 underscores how ensuring the security, reliability and resilience of power systems is evolving from a technical challenge to a strategic necessity that requires unwavering attention from system operators, regulators, and policy leaders. Voltage management increasingly important for…
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- Demand
- Supply
- Grids
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Electricity 2026 Flexibility
…to refining price signals, including offering free electricity to customers. Demand response offers breakthrough benefits, yet its potential is largely untapped With the share of variable renewable energy (VRE) sources in electricity supply rising rapidly in many regions and end-use sectors such as heating and transport becoming progressively more electrified, demand flexibility has become an essential component for power systems. In this evolving energy landscape, demand response (DR) programmes are becoming an increasingly important flexibility tool, enabling households and businesses to shift or shed their electricity use in response to grid or market signals.In exchange, DR plans offer…
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- Demand
- Supply
- Grids
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Universal Access to Clean Cooking in Africa Clean cooking: State of play and recent progress
…equivalent to the global CO2 emissions from international aviation and shipping. The challenge is most severe in sub-Saharan Africa, where four out of five households lack clean cooking access today. To spur global action on the issue, the International Energy Agency (IEA) convened the Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa with the objective of making 2024 a turning point. The Summit resulted in USD 2.2 billion in public and private sector commitments, alongside pledges by twelve African governments to implement new clean cooking policies. Based on tracking by the IEA, USD 470 million has been disbursed against the commitments as…
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Sheltering From Oil Shocks Summary
…the strains on markets and prices. In the interim, countries around the world are taking a range of measures to increase supply and to reduce the impact of sharp price rises on consumers. On the supply side, IEA member countries took a crucial step on 11 March by making 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves available to the market, the largest stock release in IEA history. But the demand side is also a crucial part of the energy security equation.In this report, the IEA details 10 demand-side options open to households, businesses and governments to shelter…
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Global EV Outlook 2025 Trends in electric car markets
…the total passenger car fleet and more than triple the total electric car fleet in 2021. Notably, the global stock of electric cars displaced over 1 million barrels per day of oil consumption in 2024. Of course, the stock of electric cars is not spread evenly across the world – in China, for example, around one in ten cars on the road is now electric, whereas in Europe the ratio is closer to one in twenty. Almost half of China’s car sales were electric in 2024, representing almost two-thirds of electric cars sold globally Electric car sales in China increased…
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Gas Market Lessons from the 2022-2023 Energy Crisis Impact analysis of the two largest LNG import regions
Europe BackgroundNatural gas is a central element in Europe’s energy landscape, accounting for about one-quarter of primary energy supply and playing a role across virtually all demand sectors. In the run-up to the crisis, the European continent could count on a multitude of gas supply sources: domestic production, pipeline imports and LNG imports. This diversity of sources fostered gas-on-gas competition and a growing reliance on spot-traded supply, notably in LNG. From 2015 to 2021, the share of short-term and spot-traded LNG imports grew from 10% to about 40% – a share that kept…
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India Bioenergy Market Report Executive summary
…forecast to more than double, from 293 PJ in 2025 to 609 PJ by 2030. More than three-quarters of this growth is driven by biodiesel, if feedstock supply and production capacity rapidly scales up. This would correspond to a sixfold increase in liquid and gaseous biofuels over a decade since 2020.There are challenges ahead, but they can be addressed with right policy support. In the accelerated case, ethanol is expected to continue expanding backed by a suite of strong policies while biodiesel accelerates growth if feedstock challenges are addressed and production capacity are supported. Biojet is expected to scale…
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Global EV Outlook 2026 Electric vehicle batteries
…recent increase in lithium and cobalt prices – if sustained – could put upward pressure on battery costs as stockpiles of minerals purchased at lower prices are being drained.Lithium prices at the beginning of 2026 were more than twice as high as in the same period in 2025, even though they remained around 70% lower than their 2022 peak. Several factors contributed to this rise, including faster‑than‑anticipated demand growth – particularly from the battery energy storage sector –, relatively low inventories in China and temporary supply disruptions, such as the suspension of operations at CATL’s Jianxiawo lithium mine. If these upward p...
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What Next for the Global Car Industry Policy and strategic actions
…to close cost gaps and ensure competitiveness. These actions cover five key areas: ensuring sufficient demand and capital to unlock economies of scale and “learning-by-doing”; scaling up battery manufacturing and the skills to support it; selecting the most competitive battery chemistries and innovating the next generations; securing dependable critical minerals supplies; and minimising energy costs for manufacturers.Each country and region has its own strengths and priorities, and national circumstances vary. But there are five main archetypes that can help explain how differences can inform distinct strategies: regaining ground internationally (e.g. European Union, United Kingdom); sharpening EV advantages (e…
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Global Hydrogen Review 2026 Policy
…quota for public procurement, and a quota for low-emissions steel used in cars and vans to contribute to CO2 emissions reduction targets as part of the Automotive Package. By early June 2026, transposition of the EU Renewable Energy Directive into national legislation had been finalised in 13 member states for the transport sector, creating demand for more than 575 ktpa of low-emissions hydrogen.China announced a city clusters programme with a total funding of USD 1.1 billion, aiming to diversify hydrogen uses beyond cars and introducing targets for an end-use hydrogen price of USD 3.6/kg, striving for USD 2…
