Supply boom in cheaper renewables will seal end of fossil fuel era, says IEA Watchdog’s flagship report says rise in low-carbon electricity will make transition ‘inevitable’, despite Trump’s calls to carry on drilling. Guardian Jilliann Ambrose Fiona Harvey 12 Nov 2025  Renewables will grow faster than any major energy source in the next decade, according to the world’s energy watchdog, making the transition away from fossil fuels “inevitable”, despite a green backlash in the US and parts of Europe. The world is expected to build more renewable energy projects in the next five years than has been rolled out over the last 40, according to the flagship annual report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The report shows that this increase in renewable energy could meet nearly all the world’s growing appetite for electricity, which is on track to rise by 40% over the next decade, fuelled by the growing demand for electric cars, heating, cooling and to power AI data centres. It also points to a “renaissance” for nuclear power, driven by major tech companies seeking a steady supply of low-carbon electricity to power their data centres. The IEA has predicted that global investment in data centres will reach $580bn in 2025, surpassing the $540bn being spent on global oil supply. The rise in low-carbon electricity is expected to seal the transition away from the fossil fuel era, despite calls from the Trump administration to retreat from green investments in favour of drilling for oil and gas.

David Tong, a campaigner at Oil Change International, said the IEA’s report had confirmed that “no single country can stop the energy transition”. He called on world leaders gathered at Belém in Brazil for the UN’s Cop30 climate talks to reject “Donald Trump’s dystopian future” in favour of a “fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phase-out”. The IEA’s findings are expected to embolden leaders who plan to use the Cop30 talks to push for progress on reaching the global target to triple renewable energy by 2030 and transition away from fossil fuels, agreed to at Cop28 in Dubai.The Paris-based agency has reportedly come under pressure from US Republicans to use its flagship report to present a more positive future for the fossil fuel industry than in previous forecasts. In response, the IEA reintroduced a scenario from previous reports that offers “a cautious perspective” on the speed of the energy transition.

Dave Jones, the chief analyst of Ember, a think tank, said this scenario’s assumptions appeared to underestimate the rollout of electric vehicles (EVs), leading to higher forecasts for the consumption of oil than in the IEA’s central scenario. However, a rapid expansion of renewables was “inevitable”, he added.......read on     https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/12/supply-boom-in-cheaper-renewables-will-seal-end-of-fossil-fuel-era-says-iea