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Policy report
Dec 2025
World Energy Employment 2025 Executive summary
In 2024, global energy employment growth outpaced job gains in the wider economy for the third year in a row. Continued strong investment in energy infrastructure underpinned expanding energy employment, up by 2.2%, nearly double the economy-wide rate of 1.3%, bringing total energy sector jobs to 76 million. Since 2019, 5.4 million energy workers have been added – about 2.4% of all new jobs globally. In some countries, its contribution is far larger, reaching one in five new jobs in China and one in ten in the United States since 2022. The pace of the expansion in recent…
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Policy report
Jun 2025
Gaining an Edge Policy implications
An integrated policy package is key to deliver value to businesses and the economy Government intervention can help enhance industrial energy efficiency through effective policy packages. To create effective drivers and preconditions for increasing energy efficiency in the industry sector, policy packages combine three main mechanisms, regulation, information and incentives:Regulation is essential to exclude the worst performing equipment and practices from the market, driving greater energy efficiency at both firm and national level. Information improves firms’ awareness and knowledge of their energy efficiency options, highlighting benefits and enabling more efficient choices in energy-related purchases and use. Increased capacity…
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Country report
Sep 2023
Financing Clean Energy in Africa Executive summary
A dramatic increase in energy investment into African countries is essential Multiple recent crises have made it increasingly challenging for many African countries to raise financing to support their clean energy ambitions, despite the continent’s huge needs and rich and varied resources. Africa accounts for around 20% of the world’s population but attracts less than 2% of its spending on clean energy. In recent years, African countries have had to deal with a series of overlapping crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the energy and food crises following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and worsening climate risks. Borrowing…
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Policy report
Oct 2025
Scaling Up Transition Finance Financial institutions and transition finance
A complementary source of finance for transitions Transition finance rests on a practical partnership between corporates and financiers. Successful transitions need finance that goes where the emissions are; this means moving beyond the top performers and working with corporates with material environmental footprints that commit to transition strategies. A common alternative strategy, in which financial institutions simply shift emissions off their balance sheets, creates “financial carbon leakage” and does not reduce real-economy emissions.An IEA survey of financial institutions revealed that differences in regional taxonomies and frameworks pose challenges for cross-border financing. At the same time, it highlighted…
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Report
Jun 2026
Breakthrough Agenda Report 2026 Executive summary
The next phase of international collaboration is focused on delivery With long-term goals and sectoral targets established in many countries, the focus of international energy and climate collaboration has shifted. The primary priority of collaboration is no longer articulating new commitments, but delivering outcomes within this decade. This shift has been most prominent in recent international processes, including the Conference of the Parties (COP), where the focus has moved towards mechanisms and initiatives intended to support delivery across sectors of the global economy.In addition to emissions reductions, many governments are considering energy transitions for reasons of energy security…
- Executive summary
- Hydrogen
- Road transport
- Steel
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Flagship report
May 2026
World Energy Investment 2026 How we track investment in energy
Tracking energy investment The way investment is measured across the energy spectrum varies, largely because of differences in the availability of data and the nature of expenditures. This document highlights the methodology used to ensure that the estimates are consistent and comparable across sectors in the World Energy Investment 2026 (WEI 2026) report and other publications from the International Energy Agency. The IEA measures investment as the ongoing capital spending on assets. For some sectors, such as power generation, this investment is spread out evenly from the year in which a new plant or upgrade of an existing one takes…
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Commentary
03 Jun 2026
India’s electricity demand grows at night: Managing rising cooling demand
India cooling commentary As India’s cooling demand surges alongside solar power capacity, ensuring sufficient nighttime power capacity is key Power consumption in India is on the rise amid economic and population growth, as well as the growing use of air conditioning as more households purchase units and temperatures increase. Since 2019, the country’s electricity demand has increased by 5% per year. While electricity supply has kept pace, solar PV has accounted for two-thirds of power capacity additions in India since 2019. Against this backdrop, ensuring adequate power generation capacity during periods of peak demand is emerging as…
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Country report
Sep 2023
Financing Clean Energy in Africa Clean energy investment landscape: setting the scene
Summary The IEA’s Africa Energy Outlook 2022 laid out a new scenario – the Sustainable Africa Scenario (SAS) – which sees the continent achieve by 2030, in full and on time, all of its energy and climate-related goals, including universal energy access and its NDCs.Realising the SAS requires mobilising over USD 200 billion annually by 2030, but energy investment has been declining in Africa and in 2022 was under USD 90 billion. Clean energy spending was a fraction of this at around USD 25 billion – only 2% of the global total despite the recent rise in global clean energy investment. This is far from what…
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Fuel report
Dec 2021
Renewables 2021 Biofuels
Forecast summary Global demand for biofuels is set to grow by 41 billion litres, or 28%, over 2021-2026 in the main case. The recovery to pre-Covid-19 demand levels accounts for one-fifth of this demand growth. Government policies are the principal driver of the remaining expansion, but other factors such as overall transport fuel demand, costs and specific policy design influence where growth occurs and which fuels grow quickest. The combination of these influences pushes Asian biofuel production past that of Europe during the forecast period. Policies in the United States and Europe help demand for renewable…