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Coal 2025 Trade
International coal trade is set to decline in 2025 International coal trade grew by 3% in 2024, reaching a new record of 1 544 Mt. This growth was driven by increases in both thermal coal (up 26 Mt to 1 176 Mt) and met coal (up 21 Mt to 368 Mt). Coal trade accounted for approximately 18% of global coal demand, with thermal coal making up more than three-quarters of total traded volumes. Seaborne trade continued to dominate, representing over 90% of global coal trade in 2024.The Asia Pacific region further strengthened its dominance, accounting for 85% of global coal imports in 2024. China led…
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- Demand
- Supply
- Trade
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Sodium-ion battery momentum grows, but challenges remain
batteries commentary sodium batteries Recent technological advances and investment announcements suggest dynamics are shifting for sodium-ion batteries Sodium-ion batteries are emerging as a new player in battery markets, offering opportunities to diversify battery chemistries and supply chains at a time of rising global demand for electric vehicles and energy storage. Developed in laboratories since the early 1980s, sodium-ion batteries operate on the same fundamental principles as lithium‑ion batteries – which currently dominate the market – yet their path to commercialisation has been markedly slower.While lithium-ion batteries entered commercial use in the 1990s – with the first electric vehicles…
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Coal 2025 Executive summary
Global coal demand in 2025 is set to remain close to 2024 levels amid unusual regional trends Key factors such as weather, fuel prices and policy decisions all shaped global coal consumption in 2025, driving changes in demand that often ran counter to recent country or regional trends.In India – one of the traditional engines of coal demand growth – an early and strong monsoon season depressed electricity demand and boosted hydropower output. As a result, the country’s annual coal power generation is set to decline year-on-year for only the third time in the past five decades. In…
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- Demand
- Supply
- Trade
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Access and Affordability
“An Affordable and Sustainable Energy System for Sub-Saharan Africa” (Energy Sub-Saharan Africa) is a five-year programme (2019-2024) funded by the European Union. It supports work with Benin, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia, with the aim of promoting sustainable and inclusive economic growth through the transition towards a low-carbon and climate-resilient energy sector, while delivering universal and affordable energy access to all. Today, 730 million people around the world live without access to electricity, while over 2 billion people continue to rely on harmful cooking fuels…
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Prospects for Natural Gas Certification
This report offers an overview of the role of certification in natural gas supply chains, provides a broad mapping of existing initiatives, highlights selected regulatory and market developments, identifies areas where improvements may be needed, and presents recommendations to support the development of credible certification frameworks.Certified natural gas refers to gas whose environmental and social attributes – such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions performance, water use, local community impacts and worker safety – have been independently verified against defined criteria or benchmarks. In 2024, around 7.5% of global natural gas production was certified, with volumes primarily originating from North America…
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Red Certificate System
Since of the implementation of the CHP Directive (2004/8/EC) in Polands legal system the Polish Energy Law has been amended and the Minister of Economy has issued order on the methods of calculating data to be provided in the application for the issue of a certificate of origin from cogeneration and the detailed scope of the obligation to obtain and present these certificates for redemption, to pay a substitute fee and to confirm the data on the amount of electricity produced from high efficiency cogeneration.
These acts guarantee the origins of electricity produced by high efficiency cogeneration. Since… -
World Energy Outlook 2022 Outlook for electricity
Electricity accounts for about 20% of the world’s total final consumption of energy, but its share of energy services is higher due to its efficiency. It is central to many aspects of daily life and becomes more so as electricity spreads to new end-uses, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps. The electricity sector accounted for 59% of all the coal used globally in 2021, together with 34% of natural gas, 4% of oil, 52% of all renewables and nearly 100% of nuclear power. It also accounted for over one-third of all energy-related CO2 emissions…
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Gaining an Edge Summary for policymakers
Energy efficiency delivers more than energy savings and emission reductions – it can also improve the competitiveness of countries and firms. From increased profitability to job creation, energy efficiency helps firms compete amid high costs, growing demand, and rising trade pressures. In today’s global context, energy efficiency is not only a matter of energy policy, but also of economic policy.Today the world’s industries can produce nearly 20% more value for a given amount of energy than they could two decades ago. This progress has yielded significant benefits at the country level. G20 countries have doubled their economic output…
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Electricity Mid-Year Update 2025 Executive summary
Global electricity demand on course to expand robustly in 2025 and 2026 despite economic headwinds Global power demand is expected to rise much faster over the forecast 2025‑2026 period than it did during the past decade. While slower than the 4.4% surge in 2024, growth forecasts of 3.3% for 2025 and 3.7% for 2026 remain among the highest rates observed in the past decade and well above the 2015-2023 average of 2.6%. Despite a slowdown in economic activity, which has weighed on global electricity use so far in 2025, heatwaves continue to add to demand…
