Renewables and nuclear will cover almost all new electricity demand by 2025

Paris, Feb. 8. The increase in renewable and nuclear energy capacities will cover more than 90% of the increase in global electricity demand in the world between now and 2025, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which at the same time estimates that gas and coal consumption will remain stagnant in those three years.

In its annual report on the world electricity market published on Wednesday, the IEA highlights that more than 45% of the increase in renewable electricity generation will be in China and 15% in the European Union, where a significant cutback in fossil fuels is expected.

In the next three years, 70 % of the electricity demand generated in the world will come from India, Southeast Asia and, above all, China, whose relative weight will rise to a third of the total in 2025, compared to a quarter in 2015.

The increase in global consumption, which had been rising at a rate of 2.4% during the years preceding the pandemic crisis, will remain at a modest 2% in 2022 because of the crisis generated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and exceptional climatic conditions in some parts of the world.

Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2, the main greenhouse gas) generated by electricity rose by 1.3 % in 2022, after 6 % in 2021, and reached an all-time high.

For this and the following two years, the agency believes that this rate will accelerate to 3%, which over the entire period will amount to about 2,500 terawatt hours, equivalent to more than twice the annual production of Japan.

Overall, the relative weight of renewables in global electricity production will rise from 29% in 2022 to 35% in 2025, to the detriment of coal and gas.

This will be particularly pronounced in Europe, where the authors of the report estimate that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated by electricity will fall at a rate of 10% per year until 2025.

In total, the cut should be 28% in 2025 compared to 2022 levels.

This should make what has happened in the last two years a one-off phenomenon. In 2021, as an effect of the economic recovery after the historic recession caused by the covid crisis, these emissions jumped by 11% in Europe, and in 2022 they rose again, by 4.5%, mainly due to increased use of coal.

The IEA notes that the energy crisis has made nuclear power more attractive in some countries because it offers greater security of supply and reduces the impact in terms of CO2 emissions.

In the short term, it forecasts that nuclear electricity generation will increase by almost 4% per year between 2023 and 2025, equivalent to about 100 terawatt hours per year. Again China will be the "number one" in this growth and together with India, Japan and South Korea will account for half of this expansion. EFE

ac/rcf/psh