The next 10 years will see unprecedented growth in renewables: the end of fossil fuels is inevitable (China has realized this).
The future runs fast, and is full of sun and wind. The International Energy Agency, the most important intergovernmental organization on energy issues, published its World Energy Outlook on the occasion of the opening of COP30, the most authoritative document that analyzes the direction in which energy demand and production are going.
The response is very clear: in the next 10 years, renewables will grow much faster than any other energy source, making the abandonment of fossil fuels “inevitable” – with all due respect to those who persist in proposing them as a solution.
The demand for energy is growing, renewables are responding
In the next 5 years, more renewables plants will be built around the world than have been developed in the last 40. China “continues to be the largest market for renewable energy, accounting for 45-60% of global deployment over the next ten years under all scenarios, and remains the leading producer of most renewable technologies,” the document reads.
Precisely thanks to renewables, China, the main emitting country in the world, may have started to slow down its CO2 emissions: according to the Global Carbon Budget report, the annual update on the state of climate-altering emissions, in 2025 China’s CO2 emissions grew by 0.4%, more slowly than in recent years.
Global energy demand will increase by approximately 40% by 2035, due to the consumption of electric cars, those for heating and cooling, but above all due to the amount of electricity consumed by data centers, data processing centers for artificial intelligence. Data centers alone will account for a little less than 10% of the total growth in the world’s thirst for electricity within 10 years. And the economic investments in these facilities have already exceeded the amounts spent on the global supply of oil this year.
Peak fossil fuels
The gallop of renewables should mark the definitive abandonment of the fossil fuel era. For David Tong, activist at Oil Change International, the IEA document confirms that “no single nation can block the energy transition”, not even the United States which was absent from COP30. In the document, the IEA states that coal has already reached or is close to peak, i.e. the moment when demand has reached the maximum point and then falls or stabilizes; oil should arrive in 2030 and gas in 2035.
Compared to the past, however, this year’s report also introduces a more pessimistic or conservative alternative forecast, based on “current policies”, which foresees that countries do not undertake further strategies to favor renewables: according to this scenario, the peak may not be upon us and the demand for gas and oil could continue to grow until 2050, with a consequent worsening of global warming between now and the end of the century (not +2.4 or +2.5 °C, but +2.9 °C by 2100).
Various journalistic sources believe that this forecast was inserted under pressure from the Trump administration, as IEA documents guide the energy market.
For the authors of the report, however, neither of the two scenarios can be considered a definitive vision of the future, but both serve to allow decision-makers to evaluate the consequences of their choices. The only inevitable thing is the inexorable advance of renewables. A point of no return.
