By Susanna Twidale
LONDON (Reuters) -Global oil and gas demand could grow until 2050, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday, departing from its previous expectations of a speedy transition to cleaner fuels and predicting that the world will likely fail to achieve climate goals.
The IEA, the West’s energy security watchdog, has been under pressure from the U.S. for a shift in recent years toward a focus on clean energy policies as President Donald Trump called on American companies to further expand oil and gas production.
Under the Joe Biden administration, the IEA predicted that global oil demand would peak this decade and said no more investment in oil and gas was needed if the world wanted to achieve its climate target.
Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright has called the IEA’s demand peak projections “nonsensical”. The IEA is funded by member countries, with the U.S. being the largest contributor. Its analysis and data underpin energy policies of governments and companies around the world.
EXISTING POLICIES, NOT CLIMATE GOAL ASPIRATIONS
In its annual World Energy Outlook published on Wednesday, the IEA predicted under a current policies scenario that oil demand will hit 113 million barrels per day by mid-century, up around 13% from 2024 consumption.
It predicted that global energy demand will climb by 90 exajoules by 2035 – a 15% increase from present levels.
The current policies scenario takes into account existing government policies and not aspirations to achieve climate goals.
The IEA last used the “current policies scenario” for its predictions in 2019 and switched to predictions more in line with a clean energy transition and pledges of reaching net zero emissions by mid-century from 2020.
This year’s outlook ditched the pledges scenario.
The IEA said it had planned to assess new country climate targets covering 2031-2035 but not enough countries had submitted these plans to produce a meaningful picture.
In the IEA’s stated policies scenario, which considers policies that have been put forward but not necessarily adopted, oil demand peaks around 2030.
The IEA says its scenarios explore a range of possible outcomes under various sets of assumptions and are not forecasts.
LNG CAPACITY TO SOAR
Final investment decisions for new liquefied natural gas projects have surged in 2025, the report noted. Operations for about 300 billion cubic metres of new annual LNG export capacity will start by 2030, marking a 50% increase in available supply.
Under the current policies scenario, the global LNG market increases from around 560 bcm in 2024 to 880 bcm in 2035 and to 1,020 bcm in 2050, driven by rising power sector demand fuelled by data centre and AI growth.
Global investment in data centres is expected to reach $580 billion in 2025, the report said, noting that if achieved this would surpass the $540 billion a year spent globally on oil supply.
GLOBAL TEMPERATURES RISE TO EXCEED 1.5 DEGREES CELSIUS
The report also includes a net zero scenario describing a pathway to reduce global energy emissions to net zero by 2050.
More than 190 countries pledged at the Paris climate talks in 2015 to try to keep the world from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
But the report shows the world surpassing 1.5 C of warming in all scenarios, only declining again under the net zero scenario if technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is deployed.
(Reporting by Susanna Twidale; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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