The International Energy Agency’s *Electricity 2025* report forecasts a significant surge in global electricity demand through 2027, driven by electrification in buildings, transportation, and industry, alongside rising needs for air conditioning and data centers. Emerging economies, particularly China and India, will account for 85% of the demand growth, with China’s electricity consumption growing faster than its GDP due to industrial electrification and clean energy technology manufacturing. Advanced economies are also seeing a reversal of a 15-year trend of flat or declining electricity use, fueled by electric vehicles, heat pumps, and data centers.
Renewable energy sources, particularly solar PV and wind, are expected to meet nearly all of the global electricity demand growth from 2025 to 2027, with solar PV alone accounting for about half of the increase. Nuclear power is projected to reach new highs, driven by expansions in countries like China and recovery in France and Japan. This shift toward low-emission sources is expected to stabilize global CO2 emissions from electricity generation, despite a slight increase in 2024, with coal-fired generation stagnating and natural gas growing moderately, primarily in Asia and the Middle East.
The report highlights challenges to electricity security due to increasing weather-related disruptions, such as storms and droughts, which strained power systems in 2024. Negative wholesale electricity prices in some regions signal the need for greater system flexibility, while extreme weather events underscore the importance of dispatchable capacity and storage. In regions like Africa, insufficient generation capacity continues to hamper electricity access and economic growth, with 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa still lacking reliable electricity.