The demand for energy grew remarkably fast in 2024

Climate warming ensures that more air conditioners are used in houses, shops, offices and schools. All those energy -slurping air conditioners bump extra co₂ out, so that the earth warms up even faster. And that again leads to more demand for cooling air conditioners: an endless downward spiral.

That 2024 The hottest year was Since the start of the measurements in 1850, it was already known. Now it appears that the energy demand in that year also grew remarkably fast. At 2.2 percent, the increase was almost twice as high as the average growth of 1.3 percent of the past ten years. The increase was largely caused by a more need for cooling to get through the heat.

Those conclusions are In the report published on Monday on the energy demand of 2024 of the influential International Energy Agency (IEA). Due to the increased energy demand, the climate goals get further out of sight.

In 2024, around 20 percent more energy was needed to cool buildings than the long -term average (2000 – 2020). Especially in China and India, extreme heat led to a greater need for cooling. Also in the Netherlands the number of households with one or more air conditioners on the wall is increasing rapidly, it turned out at the end of last year from figures from research agency TNO.

Coal

Renewable energy sources could not always keep up with those increased demand. In fact, climate warming also ensured that less cooling water was available for nuclear power stations and that less electricity could be generated with hydropower.

« In total we estimate that weather influences have caused around 15 percent of the total increase in the worldwide demand for energy, » the report says. The fact that the combustion of polluting coal increased by 1 percent attributed the authors entirely to climate warming. « If the weather had remained the same in 2024, that of 2023, the second hottest year ever, about half of the increase in global Co would₂emissions are avoided.  »

In addition to all those air conditioners, the energy consumption from industry, the electrification of cars, and the growth of data centers and artificial intelligence played an important role in the increased energy demand. Especially emerging economies such as China and India pushed the question. Even the energy demand in the European Union has risen again, after years of decrease since 2017 (with the exception of Corona year 2021). According to the IEA, this is due to the decrease in energy prices.

Worldwide, the demand for all important energy sources grew: coal, gas, oil, nuclear energy and renewable sources such as sun and wind. Good news for the climate is that the extra electricity needed last year for 80 percent was generated by renewar sources and from nuclear energy. “The use of energy from sun and wind, nuclear energy, electric cars and heat pumps since 2019 now prevents 2.6 billion tons of Co.₂-Tuight. ” That is about 7 percent of global emissions.

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