THE’International Energy Agency (International Energy AgencyIEA) predicted that the peak of demand for fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) will not be achieved by 2030. This is what emerges from the report World Energy Outlook 2025, which revised the forecasts for 2023, when the Agency highlighted how the global consumption of fossil fuels would have reached its peak in 2030and then begins to reduce.
The new IEA estimates, which scale back the “optimism” of two years ago, indicate that consumption will remain high also in the next decade, which compromises the achievement of the objective of containing global warming a +1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial levels.
The 2025 report was published while a Belém, Brazil, the is underway COP30whose objective is precisely to identify practical strategies to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. In reality, the 30th UN Climate Conference opened with great initial difficulties, also due to the absence of countries such as the United States, among the first in the world in terms of emissions.
What the IEA 2025 Energy Report finds
The World Energy Outlook of the IEA provides, every year, a detailed analysis of global energy trajectories. These are essentially forecasts, which however are taken into consideration by numerous international players to understand the direction of the energy market over the years.
The 2025 report highlights that although demand for fossil fuels is set to reach a rough point (the so-called “peak”), following which the curve will begin to narrow, this trend reversal phase has been moved further forward compared to past ratings, although the specific year was not indicated.
According to current projections, in fact, the effective reduction of oil, natural gas and coal consumption will not be visible globally by 2030, but the demand for fossil fuels will necessarily grow in the next decade too. Specifically, the data contained in the report shows that:
- Petrolium: global demand will remain strong due to growth in the petrochemical and transportation sectors in the Emerging countries and will not be able to compensate for the decline in oil use in the automotive sector (due to electric vehicles).
- Coal: Despite the rapid decline in advanced economies, usage will stabilize in Asiasupporting overall global demand for several years beyond 2030.
- Natural gas: the reduction of natural gas consumption, however, will be complex given that the latter is still considered as a “bridge” fuel in many countries, where it maintains an important role in energy generation pending greater diffusion of renewable energy sources.
The report therefore highlighted how, despite a strong growth in renewable energythe inertia of the global energy system and the delays in the transition policies adopted by States will not allow a rapid decline in fossil demand over the next five years.
What has changed compared to the 2023 IEA forecast
In short, in the space of just two years, the International Energy Agency has revised the projections significantly provided in 2023. As anticipated, the IEA had already predicted that fossil fuel demand would peak achieved by 2030a hypothesis that was based onacceleration of energy policies green – such as solar and wind energy – and on the greater diffusion of renewable energy.
But why did the IEA push the start of the decline in fossil fuel consumption so far forward? The revision can be attributed to various factors, geopolitical and economic, that have emerged in the last two years. The graphic below shows the trend in demand for fossil fuels from 1800 to 2024: gas demand is green, oil demand is pink and coal demand is blue.
First of all the strong industrial development – and the consequent demographic growth – in emerging Asian countries, which have thus compensated for the decline in fossil demand recorded in Europe and North America.
To be considered, then, there is the strong geopolitical uncertainty of recent years, which has not only slowed down progress investments in some renewable technologies, but also complicated relations between states to reach shared agreements on reducing emissions.
To close, the policies to relaunch the consumption of fossil fuelsimplemented not only by different Developing countriesbut also by great powers like the United States. The Trump administration, among other things, would have put pressure on the IEA to push the Agency to review its positions.
In practice, however, the discrepancy between the 2023 and 2025 ratios does not cancel the peak in demand for fossil fuels which, sooner or later, will be reached, it simply delays the forecasts of the start of the descent of this curve.
