The World Energy Outlook (WEO) is usually published in November. However, for the second year in a row, the International Energy Agency (IEA) is releasing our flagship report a month early, in October. We did this last year because it was an exceptional year defined by the Covid-19 crisis. This year is another exceptional year because of the COP26 Climate Change Conference meeting in Glasgow.

The World Energy Outlook 2021 (WEO-2021) is a special edition. It is designed to inform the energy and climate debates at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November 2021 and beyond...

In the run-up to a crucial COP26 meeting in Glasgow, this World Energy Outlook-2021 (WEO-2021) provides a detailed picture of how far countries have come in their clean energy transitions, and how far they still have to go. A new global energy economy is emerging, but will need to take shape much more quickly to avoid severe impacts from a changing climate.

Recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic is underway, but it is uneven, prone to reversals and relatively carbon intensive. The economic impacts appear to have bottomed out in most cases in late 2020 or early 2021, with the exception of China which started its recovery earlier. Countries with fiscal means and access to vaccines are seeing a robust rebound. However, many emerging market and developing economies face continued risks due to low vaccination rates and rising indebtedness.

Announced net zero pledges and updated Nationally Determined Contributions have been fully incorporated into the IEA’s new Announced Pledges Scenario (APS). The APS closes less than 20% of the gap in 2030 between the Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS) and the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE), leaving an “ambition gap” of 12 gigatonnes (Gt) CO2 that needs to be closed to put the world on the pathway to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Including fossil fuel methane emissions increasesthe gap to 14 gigatonnes of carbon‐dioxide equivalent (Gt CO2‐eq).

A lack of adequate supporting policies sees an “implementation gap” emerge between emissions as they would be if today’s net zero and other pledges were fully delivered (the Announced Pledges Scenario [APS]) and emissions as they look set to be under current and announced policies (the Stated Policies Scenario [STEPS]). By 2030 this gap reaches 2.6 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2, almost 90% of which is in advanced economies where emissions reduction pledges are most prevalent.

For the first time, each of the scenarios examined in this World Energy Outlook shows an eventual decline in global oil demand, although the timing and sharpness of the drop vary widely. Today’s policy settings, as set out in the Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS), see oil demand level off at 104 million barrels per day (mb/d) in the mid-2030s and then decline very gradually to 2050. In the Announced Pledges Scenario (APS), oil peaks soon after 2025 at 97 mb/d and starts to decline thereafter. Rapid action in the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE) to get on track to meet the world’s climate goals sees oil demand fall sharply to 72 mb/d in 2030 and continue falling to 24 mb/d by 2050.

By design, the scenarios in this Outlook describe smooth, orderly processes of change. In practice, however, energy transitions can be volatile and disjointed affairs, contested by a diverse cast of stakeholders with competing interests, and there is an ever-present risk of mismatches between energy supply and demand.