IEA's World Energy Energy Report 2018: Declines in Global Energy Investment, Increases for Electrification and Energy Efficiency

Posted by: YijunW

The International Energy Agency* (IEA) publishes the World Energy Report every year, analyzing yearly energy trends via full spectrum including oil, gas and coal supply and demand, renewable energy technologies, electricity markets, energy efficiency, etc.
Major trends in 2017 according to The 2018 World Energy Report:

1) The 2017 global energy investment has declined for the third consecutive year to $1.8 trillion, falling 2 percent from the previous year. The majority of the decline in 2017 comes from the fall of coal, nuclear, and hydropower capacity, offsetting the increase in photovoltaics.

2) You might think less investment in coal and nuclear power means a cleaner environment. But, there is a pause in the shift to clean energy investment. The share of fossil fuels investment, including thermal power generation, rose slightly to 59% as spending in upstream oil and gas increased modestly. The International Energy Agency (IEA) Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS) sees the share of fossil fuels in energy supply investment falling to 40% by 2030.

3) Electricity industry attracts the most investment for the second consecutive year, reflecting the international electrification trend. Investment in the electrification of transport and heating continued to show exponential growth in 2017. Consumers spent $ 43 billion on electric passenger vehicles (plug-in hybrids and pure battery vehicles), pushing up half of the growth of passenger vehicle sales in 2017.

4) The cost of solar projects, which represents eight percent of the total energy investment worldwide, decreased almost 15 percent due to lower component prices and shift to lower cost regions.

5) The continuous growth of investment in energy efficiency remained immune from the downward trend in the global energy investment. A total of USD 236 billion was invested in energy efficiency across buildings, transport, and industry in 2017. However, even though the growth of investment in energy efficiency has been strong in recent years, it slowed to 3%, against a backdrop in which energy efficiency policy implementation and global energy intensity improvements are slowing. The increase was mainly led by spending on heating, cooling and lighting efficiency in buildings, boosted by standardization of projects that can be used in different building types.

Leading Energy Investment Countries:
- China's energy investment represented more than one-fifth of the global energy investment in 2017. It is increasingly driven by low-carbon electricity supply and networks, and energy efficiency. As China reinforces its commitment to environmental protection, investment in Chinese new coal-fired plants curbed by 55% in 2017.
- The United States was the second-largest energy investing country, thanks to a sharp rebound in spending in the upstream oil and gas sector
(mostly shale), on gas-fired plants and electricity grids.
- Europe represents 15 percent of global energy investment, with a hike in spending on energy efficiency and a moderate increase in renewables investment offset by declines in thermal generation.

* IEA, the International Energy Agency, is a Paris-based intergovernmental organization, was established by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1974 in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.

To read more, please visit:
https://www.iea.org/wei2018/" target="_blank">https://www.iea.org/wei2018/</a>