Global oil and gas demand will rise for the next 25 years if the world does not change course, the International Energy Agency has said, in a new scenario that reflects governments’ fading commitment to climate change.
Until this year, all of the Paris-based body’s modelling assumed that fossil fuel consumption would peak this decade, a claim that was hotly contested by the oil and gas industry and the White House.
But in its latest World Energy Outlook, published on Wednesday, the body, whose research helps to shape global energy policies, said if the world continued on its present trajectory, oil and gas demand would continue to rise and there would be no meaningful fall in CO? emissions.