Published every year based on objective data and dispassionate analysis, The World Energy Outlook (WEO) provides critical analysis and insights on trends in energy demand and supply, and what they mean for energy security, environmental protection and economic development.
The World Energy Outlook 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.
This COP – short for the Conference of the Parties, the main decision-making body of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – is particularly significant. It is
the first test of the readiness of countries to submit new and more ambitious commitments
under the 2015 Paris Agreement. It is also an opportunity – as the WEO-2021 states – to
provide an “unmistakeable signal” that accelerates the transition to clean energy worldwide.
This year’s edition of the WEO has been designed, exceptionally, as a guidebook to COP26.
It spells out clearly what is at stake – what the pledges to reduce emissions made by
governments so far mean for the energy sector and the climate. And it makes clear what
more needs to be done to move beyond these announced pledges towards a pathway that
would have a good chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C and avoiding the worst effects
of climate change.
For this, the analysis in WEO-2021 relies on our landmark report published earlier this year –
Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector – which is now an integral part of
the pioneering energy modelling work that goes into producing the WEO each year.
Read the whole report here www.iea.org/topics/world-energy-outlook