Fossil fuels to peak by 2025

 From Carbon Brief

Demand for fossil fuels will peak by 2025 if countries meet their climate pledges, according to the latest World Energy Outlook 2021 from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

However, this year’s 386-page outlook – calling itself a “guidebook” for the upcoming COP26 climate summit – highlights the gaps between the policies already in place, the ambition set out in countries’ climate pledges and the significant additional efforts needed to keep global warming below 1.5C.

These gaps can be closed over the “crucial” decade to 2030, the IEA says, with a “massive” push for wind, solar and other low-carbon electricity; a “relentless” focus on energy efficiency; a “broad drive” to cut methane from fossil-fuel operations; and a “big boost” to clean-energy innovation.

It says a successful transition towards 1.5C would avoid “immense risks” from climate inaction and create a $1.2tn market for clean energy that would rival the current size of the oil industry.

For the first time, the IEA has also put a Paris-compliant pathway at the heart of its highly influential outlook. Its 1.5C “net-zero emissions by 2050” scenario (NZE), first outlined in May, is the most mentioned pathway in the report, Carbon Brief analysis shows.

Elsewhere, the report contradicts much of the world’s media coverage in its analysis of the current global energy crisis. The “key reasons” for record-high prices include economic rebound from the pandemic, the IEA says, and “are not related to efforts to transition to clean energy”.

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Dark grey = actual; light grey = Paris commitments only partially fulfilled;
red = Paris + new Glasgow commitments;
dashed yellow = Net zero pathway

If countries fulfil their latest “Glasgow” climate pledges, as in the yellow wedge, warming would be limited to 2.1C this century – closer to, but still far short of the “well-below 2C” Paris goal.