Every year, the IEA (International Energy Agency), the world’s foremost recognized authority on energy, publishes a report summarizing the previous year's energy evolution and how these shifts affect previous projections.
Part rearview mirror, part stress test, the IEA’s World Energy Outlook (WEO) offers a high-level overview of what changed over the last year and what those changes mean for the energy transition overall and where energy systems could be headed next.
The path to 2050 is being shaped by countless variables—policy follow-through, technology adoption, supply chain constraints, geopolitics, weather volatility, consumer behavior, and capital availability—that are often moving at different speeds in different regions.
To more accurately capture the threads coming together to determine our future reality, the IEA examines our path forward through the lens of three different approaches:
For the first time, the IEA notes that all scenarios exceed 1.5°C “on a regular basis” by around 2030. This update changes the entire conversation. We’re no longer debating, “Will we cross 1.5°C?” The real questions are: How far above it we go, how long we stay there, and how resilient do energy systems need to be while we fight our way back down?
In the CPS, the emissions trajectory is consistent with almost 3°C of warming by 2100. In the STEPS, lower emissions keep warming to around 2.5°C by 2100 (slightly higher than last year’s STEPS).
In the NZE scenario, warming peaks around 2050 at about 1.65°C and then declines slowly after that, largely due to active measures to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere to 1.5°C in 2100.
This 1.5°C (34.7° F) difference depends entirely on how we decide to move forward, the degree to which we innovate and prioritize deployment, and on turning ambition into real, measurable emissions cuts. It’s a process that starts with awareness and learning about where we are now.