Global demand for electricity is expected to increase sharply through the rest of this year and 2025, with growth predicted to be among the highest in the past two decades.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), demand is forecast to grow by around 4% through 2024 and maintain that level in 2025, compared with 2.5% in 2023.
This would be the highest annual growth since 2007, apart from spikes following the global financial crisis that started that year and following COVID-19 lockdowns.
Keisuke Sadamori, the IEA’s director of energy markets and security, said that the rises in demand reflected both the growing role of electricity in global economies and the effects of severe heatwaves.
The agency did reveal that renewable sources of electricity, including solar, wind and hydroelectric technologies, are also expected to grow through 2024 and 2025.
The share of global electricity supply provided from renewables is set to pass a third of total usage, rising from 30% in 2023 to 35% in 2025.
Rise in renewables will outpace coal-powered output
The IEA is also predicting that renewables will generate more power than coal for the first time next year.
If so, this will be due to a continuing rise in renewables rather than a significant drop in coal-fired power stations.
The IEA’s Electricity Mid-Year Update suggests that coal-powered electricity generation is unlikely to decrease globally this year due largely to increase in demand in China and India.
Heatwaves across India could help to increase demand there by a massive 8%, while overall growth in demand is forecast to hit 6% in China.
As a result, CO2 emissions from the power sector as a whole are likely to increase slightly this year before plateauing and starting to decrease in 2025.
The IEA points out that there are always uncertainties in such predictions, however.
The Chinese hydropower sector, for example, has seen strong recent growth, and if this trend continues, it could pave the way for a fall of emissions before the end of 2024.
Heatwaves have been fuelling a rise in electricity demand in many areas, largely through an increased use in power-hungry air-conditioning systems.
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is also contributing to an increasing demand for electricity via data centres.
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