World Energy Trends
World Energy Trends

Trends of the World Energy System

Updated April 2025.

Contents:

  1. Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions
  2. Fossil Fuel Production
  3. Energy Consumption prior to partial conversions to Electricity
    (PRIMARY ENERGY)
  4. Energy Consumption after partial conversions to Electricity
    (FINAL ENERGY)
  5. Electricity Generation

The Introduction explains the units and terminology used here. Links shown in the footnotes of the charts are listed below:

Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions

Chart 1
Chart 2

Fossil Fuel Production

Chart 3
COAL FINANCE NEWS >
OIL FINANCE NEWS >
GAS FINANCE NEWS >

Chart 4 and the following table show that in 2023, only 19 countries were collectively responsible for global production of at least 88% of coal, and 78% of oil and gas. The minimum share threshold used for each fuel (5%, 2% and 1.5%) was experimentally selected, as a compromise between minimising the quantity of countries and maximising their collective share.

Chart 4
Table 1. Tally of National Fossil Fuel Production in 2023 derived from chart 4, showing only countries with shares of coal production ≥5%, shares of oil production ≥2%, or shares of gas production ≥1.5%. National shares and total values are rounded for display purposes. Total values are computed by a Python script using decimal floating-point arithmetic, and consequently may be differ from a sum of displayed values by one.

Energy Consumption prior to partial conversions to Electricity
(PRIMARY ENERGY)

The consumption of each fossil fuel is forecast to have reached a record high in 2024, and gas and oil are forecast to repeat this in 2025 –

Coal

“Global coal use has rebounded strongly after plummeting at the height of the pandemic. It is poised to rise to 8.77 billion tonnes in 2024, a record.”1

Oil

“World oil demand growth is set to accelerate from 840 thousand barrels per day (kb/d) in 2024 to 1.1 million barrels per day (mb/d) next year, lifting consumption to 103.9 mb/d in 2025.”2 3

Gas

“Global gas demand is forecast to rise by more than 2.5% in 2024, with similar growth expected in 2025.”4 5

Fossil fuel primary energy trends are shown below. As explained in the Introduction, primary energy is the consumption of energy prior to partial conversions to electricity, so the quantities below show the consumption of fossil fuels for both electricity generation, and heat by direct combustion (e.g. coal for steel manufacture or combustion of oil products by transport).

Primary energy trends of non-combustible fuels, such as wind and solar, are not shown here because such quantities are theoretical; they represent the quantity of fossil fuel energy that would need to be input to a thermal power station to generate equivalent respective quantities of electricity. Therefore the claim that an energy system is a specific share fossil fuelled is inaccurate, and perhaps should be avoided. Non-combustible fuel statistics are shown in latter sections below.

Chart 5
Chart 6

Energy Consumption after partial conversions to Electricity
(FINAL ENERGY)

Energy consumption after partial conversions to electricity is labelled Final Energy. This accounts for energy in the form that it’s consumed, accounting for electricity separately from energy obtained by direct combustion of fuel by the end-user. For further explanation see the Introduction.

This site uses IEA data to display Final Energy for which the most recent year is 2022. Data from The Energy Institute (EI), which is more recent and used for other charts here, is unsuitable for this purpose.

Chart 7

Shares for most recent year of data –

Chart 8

Electricity Generation

Chart 9
Chart 10
Chart 11
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  1. https://www.iea.org/news/global-coal-demand-is-set-to-plateau-through-2027[↩]
  2. https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-december-2024[↩]
  3. 2023’s oil demand was a record at 196EJ.[↩]
  4. https://www.iea.org/news/natural-gas-demand-growth-picks-up-in-2024-amid-uncertainties-over-supply[↩]
  5. The previous record of world gas consumption was 144.86EJ in 2021. 2023’s consumption was 144.37EJ, making 2024’s forecast equal to 144.37 + 0.025*144.37 = 147.98EJ, and a new record high.[↩]