Vicious cycle of extreme heat leading to more fossil fuel use

NEW YORK - Last year was the hottest on record, and global average temperatures passed the benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times for the first time. Simultaneously, the growth rate of the world’s energy demand rose sharply, nearly doubling over the previous 10-year average.

As it turns out, the record heat and rapidly rising energy demand were closely connected, according to findings from a report from the International Energy Agency published on March 24.

That’s because hotter weather led to increased use of cooling technologies like air conditioning. Electricity-hungry appliances put a strain on the grid, and many utilities met the added demand by burning coal and natural gas.

All of this had the makings of a troubling feedback loop: A hotter world required more energy to cool down homes and offices, and what was readily available was fossil-fuel energy, which led to more planet-warming emissions. This dynamic is exactly what many countries are hoping to halt through the development of renewable energy and the construction of nuclear power plants.

Put another way, the IEA estimated that if 2024’s extreme weather hadn’t happened – that is, if weather was exactly the same in 2024 as in 2023 – the global increase in carbon emissions for the year would have been cut in half.

It’s not all bad news: Increasingly, the global economy is growing faster than carbon emissions. “If we want to find the silver lining, we see that there is a continuous decoupling of economic growth from emissions growth,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the executive director of the agency.

Here are five takeaways from last year’s energy trends in the IEA’s Global Energy Review 2025 report:

Extreme heat helped drive global demand

A major factor that raised global electricity demand in 2024 was extreme heat, particularly heat waves in the United States, China and India, the report found. Last spring, temperatures in New Delhi hit 55.2 deg C, and temperatures in northern China broke records.

All that added load had consequences for power grids, the IEA found. These temperature effects drove about a fifth of the overall increase in demand for electricity and natural gas.

Other electricity-intensive sectors grew in 2024. For example, data-centre capacity grew about 20 per cent, mostly in the US and China.

High temperatures led to burning more coal

Renewables, like solar and wind, are not that good at handling large, sudden upticks in electricity demand during heat waves. And they’re still not being deployed fast enough to meet global goals to triple renewable capacity by 2030.

To meet urgent demand for electricity and help people avoid heat stress, some countries burned coal to help power air conditioners and other cooling technologies.

That led overall coal demand to increase 1 per cent last year to reach a record. The agency’s report found that the entire increase in coal demand could be explained by extreme temperatures.

China remained the world’s biggest global coal consumer, burning 40 per cent more coal than the rest of the world combined.

Global electricity demand jumped

In 2024, global energy demand grew a little over 2 per cent, almost twice as much as the average annual increase over the previous 10 years.

This trend held across the board: Oil, natural gas, coal, renewables and nuclear all had an uptick in demand. Most of the global growth was concentrated in nations with emerging and developing economies, led by China and India.

The numbers were even up in the European Union, where energy demand has largely not grown since 2017, with a post-Covid-19 rebound year being the exception.

The result of all this growth? Once again, energy-related carbon emissions reached a record in 2024. The IEA estimated last fall that global carbon-dioxide emissions will peak in the next few years, then fall 3 per cent by 2030 under current national policy commitments.

Global emissions would need to fall 43 per cent by 2030 in order to keep global warming below the 1.5-deg C threshold established in the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to the United Nations. The temperature goal is seen as increasingly unattainable by scientists and policymakers.

Renewables and nuclear are growing

About 80 per cent of new electricity generation came from renewables and nuclear in 2024, and renewables accounted for almost a third of total electricity generation.

Solar installations led the charge. In the United States, solar and wind electricity overtook coal for the first time.

Global carbon emissions would have been 7 per cent higher last year without clean technologies like solar, wind, nuclear, electric cars and heat pumps, the report found.

For the first time, oil dipped below 30 per cent of global energy demand

Growth in oil demand continued to slow last year, with factors including consumers’ buying electric vehicles and ditching gas-powered cars.

Last year, just two categories accounted for virtually all of the growth in oil demand: Aviation and shipping, and plastics.

Plastics have become an increasingly important part of oil companies’ growth plans as cars and trucks go electric and other sectors use less oil. Oil is a key material in plastics manufacturing. NYTIMES