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The State of Energy Innovation 2026 Executive summary
Successful energy innovations can have outsize economic and social outcomes, impacting industrial competitiveness, trade, environmental health, infrastructure investment and security. The second edition of the State of Energy Innovation turns the spotlight on the technologies, policies and funders at the forefront of this process. Today, the global markets for energy technologies such as batteries, transformers, turbines, motors and heat exchangers are worth trillions of dollars. With spending on energy representing as much as 10% of global GDP, innovation that reduces energy supply costs can transform a country’s comparative advantage. As a result, the energy sector is innovation-intensive: one…
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Energy Efficiency 2025 Transport
How and where is energy used? Total final consumption in 2024 was over 450 EJ and has grown by around 25 EJ since 2019. Transport accounts for around 30% of global energy demand and have contributed around 10% of the growth in total demand since 2019. Road transport accounts for nearly 90% of total domestic energy demand. The remaining 10% is split between domestic aviation, domestic shipping and rail.In advanced economies, passenger cars dominate road transport demand, accounting for around 65% of the transport energy use. Trucks make up most of the remainder. Buses play a minor role in energy demand…
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Zulfiya Suleimenova
Special Representative of the President of Kazakhstan on International Environmental Cooperation, Kazakhstan.
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Critical Minerals
Critical minerals are essential for a range of today’s energy technologies and for the broader economy. For example, lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite are crucial to battery performance. Rare earth elements are essential indispensable to the permanent magnets used in wind turbines and electric vehicle motors. Electricity networks need a huge amount of aluminium and copper, the latter of which is the cornerstone of all electricity-related technologies. As demand for these materials grows strongly, their strategic importance has also increased – and policymakers have made ensuring secure and resilient mineral supply chains a major priority. Critical Minerals Security…
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Energy and AI Executive summary
The transformative potential of AI depends on energy There has been a step change in the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), driven by falling computation costs, a surge in data availability and technical breakthroughs. AI is the science of making machines capable of learning to perform tasks that traditionally required human intelligence. AI is emerging as a general-purpose technology, much like electricity. Today, it can generate text and videos, accelerate scientific discovery in fields like medicine or materials science, make manufacturing robots smarter and more productive, drive commercial taxis in complex city landscapes, and detect threats to critical infrastructure…
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Global EV Outlook 2025 Trends in electric car markets
Electric car sales Global electric car sales exceeded 17 million in 2024 More than 20% of new cars sold worldwide were electricElectric car sales topped 17 million worldwide in 2024, rising by more than 25%. Just the additional 3.5 million cars sold in 2024 compared to 2023 outnumber total electric car sales in the whole of 2020. China maintained its lead among major markets, with electric car sales exceeding 11 million – more than were sold worldwide just 2 years earlier. Global sales were slightly tempered by stagnating growth in Europe, as subsidies were phased out or reduced in several major markets, and…
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Global Methane Tracker 2026 Understanding methane emissions
Atmospheric methane concentrations continue to rise Methane (CH4) is the second-most harmful greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2), trapping outgoing heat and warming the atmosphere through a process known as radiative forcing. Though it lingers in the atmosphere for far less time (12 years, compared with centuries for CO2), methane absorbs substantially more energy while it does. Cutting methane emissions therefore promises significant near-term climate benefits. Methane carries other hazards, too: it contributes to the formation of ground-level (tropospheric) ozone, a harmful pollutant, and methane leaks can also pose explosion risks.Atmospheric methane concentrations today are 2…
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Global Energy Review 2026 Technology: Electric vehicles
Electric car sales increased by more than 20% year-on-year in 2025, rising to 21 million units, with one in four cars sold being electric. This was in line with the IEA’s forecast for annual sales share in the 2025 edition of the Global EV Outlook. Intense domestic competition, attractive prices and the growing availability of different models have supported the rapid rollout of EVs in China, with electric cars capturing more than half of all annual car sales for the first time in 2025. Sales of electric heavy-freight trucks also tripled in 2025, reaching more than…
- Key findings
- Global trends
- Oil
- Natural gas
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+ 9 pages
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Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 Executive summary
Demand for key energy minerals continued to grow strongly in 2024. Lithium demand rose by nearly 30%, significantly exceeding the 10% annual growth rate seen in the 2010s. Demand for nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earths increased by 6‑8% in 2024. This growth was largely driven by energy applications such as electric vehicles, battery storage, renewables and grid networks. In the case of copper, the rapid expansion of grid investments in China has been the single largest contributor to demand growth over the past two years. For battery metals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite, the energy sector accounted…
