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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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Topic
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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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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Topic
Energy and Gender
It comprises a number of senior officials from IEA Member countries, facilitating the exchange of best practices on gender equality and inclusion and gender mainstreaming across the energy sector. Women are vital energy consumers, producers and decision-makers who make a crucial contribution to global energy security and energy transitions. Building a more secure, fair and equitable energy future hinges on their active participation.Recognising this, the IEA’s Member countries have asked the Agency to focus on key issues at the nexus of energy and gender, from improving gender data collection to expanding analysis of the gender dimensions of…
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Flagship report
Mar 2025
Global Energy Review 2025 CO2 Emissions
Energy sector carbon emissions reached a new record in 2024 Total energy-related CO2 emissions increased by 0.8% in 2024, hitting an all-time high of 37.8 Gt CO2. This rise contributed to record atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 422.5 ppm in 2024, around 3 ppm higher than 2023 and 50% higher than pre-industrial levels. In 2024, CO2 emissions from fuel combustion grew by around 1% or 357 Mt CO2, while emissions from industrial processes declined by 2.3% or 62 Mt CO2. Emissions growth was lower than global GDP growth (+3.2%), restoring the decades-long trend of decoupling emissions…
- Key findings
- Global trends
- Oil
- Natural gas
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+ 3 pages
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Flagship report
Apr 2026
Global Energy Review 2026 CO2 emissions
Energy sector emissions continued to rise in 2025, but regional trends varied markedly Global growth in energy-related CO2 emissions slowed in 2025, rising by around 0.4%, the slowest rate since 2021. Despite this slowdown, total energy-related CO2 emissions increased by around 145 million tonnes (Mt) in 2025, reaching a new high of nearly 38.4 billion tonnes (Gt), and 5% above 2019 levels. The increase coincided with record atmospheric CO2 concentrations of about 427 parts-per-million (ppm), roughly 2.4 ppm higher than in 2024 and around 50% above pre-industrial levels.Emissions from fuel combustion…
- Key findings
- Global trends
- Oil
- Natural gas
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+ 9 pages
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Contributor
Katerina Ananiadou
Progamme Specialist. Katerina has been a Progamme Specialist with UNESCO-UNEVOC since March 2011. In this role she is responsible for knowledge management and research activities in the field of TVET and for implementing and promoting cooperation and capacity development activities within the UNEVOC Network. She is also the focal point for UNEVOC's thematic work on youth and skills and coordinator of the Latin American and Caribbean region of the UNEVOC Network.Prior to joining UNESCO Katerina worked for four years as a policy analyst at the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) of the OECD, among others on systemic innovation in VET and the New Millennium Learners project. Before that she was a researcher at the Institute of Education in London, specialising on adult literacy and numeracy and workplace learning. Her academic background is in Psychology and Cognitive Science which she studied at the Universities of Athens (BA), Cardiff (MSc) and Warwick (PhD).