The growing Energy hunger From threshold and developing countries as well as the increasing electricity requirements of the economy will raise the global electricity consumption in the coming years. By 2027, an annual increase in consumption is predicted by almost 4 percent, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced in Paris.
The increase is primarily on the rapidly growing use of electricity for the industrial Production, the increasing demand for air conditioning systems, increasing electrification, especially in Traffic sector, and the rapid expansion of data centers. The IEA reports that the largest part of the additional demand is developing to threshold and developing countries.
Right -growing electricity demand in China
The trend is most clearly in Chinawhere electricity demand has been growing faster than the overall economy since 2020. Chinese electricity consumption rose by 7 percent in 2024 and will probably increase by an average of around 6 percent annually by 2027.
The rapidly expanding electricity -intensive production of solar panels, batteries and and Electric cars as well as the introduction of data centers and 5G-Netzen at. The electrification is progressing quickly in China and the proportion of electricity in total energy consumption is 28 percent much higher than in the USA with 22 percent or the EU with 21 percent.
Heat pumps, electric cars and data centers drive demand in the EU
According to the IEA analysis, electricity demand in the EU recovery from the economic economic loss of recent years, but it is not expected that the level of 2021 will be reached before 2027. Households and businesses are responsible for the growth of demand of 1.4 percent last 2024, in particular with increased use of heat pumps and electric cars and a higher need for data centers.
The international energy agency assumes that the growth of low -emission energy sources – mainly renewable energies and nuclear energy – is sufficient to cover the increase in global electricity demand in the next three years. It is expected that the electricity generation from photovoltaics covers about half of the global increase in demand. In 2024, the generation of electricity from photovoltaics has already exceeded the generation of coal in the EU, whereby the proportion of solar energy in the electricity mix is over 10 percent.
Nuclear energy experiences comeback
At the same time, the nuclear energy is experiencing a strong comeback according to the forecast of the IEA, and its electricity generation will reach a new high by 2027. The recovery of French nuclear energy production, the recovery in the recovery in the comeback is Japan and the start of new reactors in China, India, Korea and other countries. At the political level, there is again interest in nuclear power, which underlines its importance as a stable backbone in low -emission energy systems for a growing number of countries, according to the IEA.
Despite the increasing importance of low -energy energy, no decline in the use of fossil fuels worldwide until 2027. The energy agency explained that the global coal electricity generation is expected to stagnate in the period. A declining coal electricity in the EU and the United States have risens in India and Southeast Asia. The situation is similar with electricity generation natural gas from, in which steady annual growth of around one percent is expected by 2027.
Due to the growing use of low -emission energy sources, the carbon dioxide emissions from global electricity generation are expected to stagnate in the coming years after they rose by about one percent in 2024. With around 13,800 million tons of CO₂ last year, however, emissions from electricity generation are still the highest of all sectors, the energy agency said.