WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2025 says that among the many trends common to all the scenarios this year is the world's growing need for energy services over the coming decades - with demand rising for mobility; for heating, cooling, lighting and other household and industrial uses; and increasingly for data and AI-related services.
Electricity demand grows much faster than overall energy use in all scenarios in WEO-2025. Spending on electricity supply and end-use electrification already accounts for half of today's global energy investment. Currently, electricity accounts for only about 20 percent of final energy consumption globally, but it is the key source of energy for sectors accounting for more than 40 percent of the global economy and the main source of energy for most households.
'In a break from the trend of the past decade, the increase in electricity consumption is no longer limited to emerging and developing economies. Breakneck demand growth from data centers and AI is helping drive up electricity use in advanced economies, too,' says IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.
'Global investment in data centers is expected to reach $580 billion in 2025. Those who say that 'data is the new oil' will note that this surpasses the $540 billion being spent on global oil supply - a striking example of the changing nature of modern economies,' he added.
WEO notes the revival of fortunes for nuclear energy, with investment rising in both traditional large-scale plants and new designs, including small modular reactors. After more than two decades of stagnation, global nuclear power capacity is set to increase by at least a third by 2035, according to the Outlook.
In WEO-2025, all the scenarios indicate ample global supplies of oil and gas in the near term. Oil markets already reflect this, with today's geopolitical fragility coexisting with oil prices in the $60-$65 per barrel range. A similar easing of market balances for natural gas appears imminent, as new projects for LNG exports come online.
The Outlook reports that a group of emerging economies - led by India and Southeast Asia and joined by countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America - comes to increasingly shape energy market dynamics in the years ahead. Collectively, they take up the baton from China, which accounted for half of global oil and gas demand growth and 60 percent of electricity demand growth since 2010, although no country or group of countries comes close to replicating China's energy-intensive rise.
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