A highlight of this year’s 29th “Energy & Development” conference was the presentation by Faidon Papadimoulis, clean energy & technology modeller, of the policies and analysis used in the scenarios included in the IEA World Energy Outlook 2025. Papadimoulis first explained IEA’s methodology and the grouping of the scenarios under exploratory and normative. With the Current Policies Scenario and the Stated Policies Scenario under the first category, and the Net Zero by 2050 scenario and Accelerating Clean Cooking and Electricity Services Scenrio falling in the second category. He stressed that none of the scenarios in the WEO constitute a forecast, but as he said, “multiple scenarios enable us to explore different aspects of energy security, affordability and sustainability”
In his presentation Papadimoulis focused on four specific clean energy technology areas including global car sales, hydrogen use, CCUS project development and solar PV. He noted that renewables growth by solar PV remains strong amid rising headwinds. Low costs, faster permitting and broad social acceptance continue to drive solar PV expansion, he noted. At the same time, wind capacity doubles despite supply chain issues, rising costs and slow permitting. Also, pumped storage hydro and geothermal growth accelerates.
On the whole, Papadimoulis stressed, that the market for clean technologies is set to triple to 2035 under current policy settings, close to the value of the global oil market in recent years, especially as investment in clean technology manufacturing is booming.
Special mention was made on China which has been the prime driver of rising energy pattenting. According to Papadimoulis China files more energy technology patents than any other country, over 95% of which are for low-emissions energy. Globally, low-emissions energy parenting was 4.5x higher than other energy pattenting in 2000-2022. It is worth noting that China’s innovation ecosystem prioritises smaller, modular technologies for pattenting and development through venture capital (VC), while more space is given in Europe and the USA to larger projects with less certain manufacturing and competitiveness outcomes.
The full presentation can be seen here.
