World is now in ‘age of electricity’, energy agency chief says

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Exclusive: Fossil fuels no longer dominant energy source, IEA leader says, as summit considers electrification pledgeThe world has left behind the age of coal, oil and gas and is…

Exclusive: Fossil fuels no longer dominant energy source, IEA leader says, as summit considers electrification pledge

The world has left behind the age of coal, oil and gas and is now firmly in “the age of electricity”, the world’s leading energy economist has said.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said more than twice as much electricity generation would be added to the global economy in the next decade than in the last, as countries scramble to secure their energy supplies against fossil fuel price volatility and supply shocks, such as the Iran war.

Transport is being electrified at an unprecedented rate: outside China, sales of electric cars have risen by 60% in the last nine months, the IEA has found. The growth of AI datacentres is also spurring electricity generation, as is the rapid growth in air conditioning, according to Birol, as heatwaves grow more intense and more frequent under rising global temperatures.

“We will still use oil and gas, but the dominant source of energy is becoming electricity,” Birol told the Guardian in an interview at the Cop31 UN climate summit in Turkey. “One staggering number [is that] in the last 10 years, the world has added about 5,000 gigawatts of electricity. And we expect, in a very conservative way, in the next 10 years, about 12,000 gigawatts, more than two times more than what we had in the last 10 years.”

Governments from 185 countries are meeting this week and next in Antalya for the annual talks, where the turn to electrification in place of fossil fuels is one of the key topics. A resolution to derive 35% of final energy worldwide from electricity by 2035 is on the table, which if it succeeds, could be one of the most important ways of achieving the needed decarbonisation of economies by mid-century.

Electricity now fulfils about a quarter of most energy needs while three-quarters of final energy worldwide is supplied by fossil fuels, mostly for transport, heating and industrial…

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