DOE sets new lighting standards

2040 Energy Outlook projects a shifting energy mix as renewables scale, EV adoption accelerates, and IEA forecasts plateauing oil demand alongside rising natural gas, highlighting policy, efficiency, and decarbonization trends that shape global consumption.

Key Points

A data-driven view of future energy mix, covering renewables, fossil fuels, EVs, oil demand, and policy impacts.

✅ Renewables reach 16-30% by 2040, higher with strong policy support.

✅ Fossil fuels remain dominant, with oil flat and natural gas rising.

✅ EV share surges, cutting oil use; efficiency curbs demand growth.

Which is more plausible: flying taxis, wind turbine arrays stretching miles into the ocean, and a solar roof on every house--or a scorched-earth, flooded post-Apocalyptic world? 

We have no way of peeking into the future, but we can certainly imagine it. There is plenty of information about where the world is headed and regardless of how reliable this information is—or isn’t—we never stop wondering. Will the energy world of 20 years from now be better or worse than the world we live in now? 

The answer may very well lie in the observable trends.

A Growing Population

The global population is growing, and it will continue to grow in the next two decades. This will drive a steady growth in energy demand, at about 1 percent per year, according to the International Energy Agency.

This modest rate of growth is good news for all who are concerned about the future of the planet. Parts of the world are trying to reduce their energy consumption, and this should have a positive effect on the carbon footprint of humanity. The energy thirst of most parts of the world will continue growing, however, hence the overall growth.

The world’s population is currently growing at a rate of a little over 1 percent annually. This rate of growth has been slowing since its peak in the 1960s and forecasts suggest that it will continue to slow. Growth in energy demand, on the other hand, may at some point stop moving in tune with population growth trends as affluence in some parts of the world grows. The richer people get, the more energy they need. So, to the big question: where will this energy come from?

The Rise of Renewables

For all the headline space they have been claiming, it may come as a disappointing surprise to many that renewable energy, excluding hydropower, to date accounts for just 14 percent of the global primary energy mix. 

Certainly, adoption of solar and wind energy has been growing in leaps and bounds, with their global share doubling in five years in many markets, but unless governments around the world commit a lot more money and effort to renewable energy, by 2040, solar and wind’s share in the energy mix will still only rise to about 16 to 17 percent. That’s according to the only comprehensive report on the future of energy that collates data from all the leading energy authorities in the world, by non-profit Resources for the Future.

The growth in renewables adoption, however, would be a lot more impressive if governments do make serious commitments. Under that scenario, the share of renewables will double to over 30 percent by 2040, echoing milestones like over 30% of global electricity reached recently: that’s the median rate of all authoritative forecasts. Amongst them, the adoption rates of renewables vary between 15 percent and 61 percent by 2040.

Even the most bullish of the forecasts on renewables is still far below the 100-percent renewable future many would like to fantasize about, although BNEF’s 50% by 2050 outlook points to what could be possible in the power sector. 

But in 2040, most of the world’s energy will still come from fossil fuels.

EV Energy

Here, forecasters are more optimistic. Again, there is a wide variation between forecasts, but in each and every one of them the share of electric vehicles on the world’s roads in 2040 is a lot higher than the meagre 1 percent of the global car fleet EVs constitute today.
Related: Gas Prices Languish As Storage Falls To Near-Record Lows

Government policy will be the key, as U.S. progress toward 30% wind and solar shows how policy steers the power mix that EVs ultimately depend on. Bans of internal combustion engines will go a long way toward boosting EV adoption, which is why some forecasters expect electric cars to come to account for more than 50 percent of cars on the road in 2040. Others, however, are more guarded in their forecasts, seeing their share of the global fleet at between 16 percent and a little over 40 percent.

Many pin their hopes for a less emission-intensive future on electric cars. Indeed, as the number of EVs rises, they displace ICE vehicles and, respectively, the emission-causing oil that fuels for ICE cars are made from.  It should be a no brainer that the more EVs we drive, the less emissions we produce. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case: China is the world’s biggest EV market, and its solar PV expansion has been rapid, it has the most EVs—including passenger cars and buses—but it is also one of the biggest emitters.

Still, by 2040, if the more optimistic forecasts come true, the world will be consuming less oil than it is consuming now: anywhere from 1.2 million bpd to 20 million bpd less, the latter case envisaging an all-electric global fleet in 2040. 

This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Oil

No, it ain’t. It’s your grandchildren’s oil, for good or for bad. The vision of an oil-free world where renewable power is both abundant and cheap enough to replace all the ways in which crude oil and natural gas are used will in 2040 still be just that--a vision, with practical U.S. grid constraints underscoring the challenges. Even the most optimistic energy scenarios for two decades from now see them as the dominant source of energy, with forecasts ranging between 60 percent and 79 percent. While these extremes are both below the over-80 percent share fossil fuels have in the world’s energy mix, they are well above 50 percent, and in the U.S. renewables are projected to reach about one-fourth of electricity soon, even as fossil fuels remain foundational.

Still, there is good news. Fuel efficiency alone will reduce oil demand significantly by 2040. In fact, according to the IEA, demand will plateau at a little over 100 million bpd by the mid-2030s. Combined with the influx of EVs many expect, the world of 20 years from now may indeed be consuming a lot less oil than the world of today. It will, however, likely consume a lot more natural gas. There is simply no way around fossil fuels, not yet. Unless a miracle of politics happens (complete with a ripple effect that will cost millions of people their jobs) in 2040 we will be as dependent on oil and gas as we are but we will hopefully breathe cleaner air.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Renewable Energy News

EU Electricity Market Reform advances two-way CfDs, PPAs, and fixed-price tariffs to cut volatility, support renewables and nuclear, stabilize investor revenues, and protect consumers from price spikes across wholesale power markets.

Key Points

An EU plan expanding two-way CfDs, PPAs, and fixed-price contracts to curb price swings and support low-carbon power.

✅ Two-way CfDs return excess revenues to consumers

✅ Boosts PPAs and fixed-price retail options

✅ Targets renewables, nuclear; limits fossil exposure

The European Union wants to expand the use of contracts that pay power plants a fixed price for electricity, a draft proposal showed, as part of an electricity market revamp to shield European consumers from big price swings.

The European Commission pledged last year to reform the EU's electricity market rules, after record-high gas prices, caused by cuts to Russian flows, sent power prices soaring, prompting debates over gas price cap strategies in response.

A draft of the EU executive's proposal, seen by Reuters on Tuesday and due to be published on Mar. 16, steered clear of the deep redesign of the electricity market that some member states have called for, even as nine EU countries opposed sweeping reforms as a fix earlier in the crisis, suggesting instead limited changes to nudge countries towards more predictable, fixed-price power contracts.

If EU countries want to support new investments in wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower and nuclear electricity, for example - a point over which France and Germany have wrestled - they should use a two-way contract for difference (CfD) or an equivalent contract, the draft said.

The aim is to provide a stable revenue stream to investors, and help make consumers' energy bills less volatile, even though rolling back electricity prices is tougher than it appears. Restricting this support to renewable and low-carbon electricity also aims to speed up Europe's shift away from fossil fuels.

Two-way CfDs offer generators a fixed "strike price" for their electricity, regardless of the price in short-term energy markets. If the market price is above the CfD strike price, then the extra revenue the generator receives should be handed out to final electricity consumers, the draft EU document said.

Countries should also make it easier for power buyers to sign power purchase agreements (PPA) - another type of long-term contract to directly buy electricity from a generator.

Governments should also make sure consumers have access to fixed-price electricity contracts - echoing France's new electricity pricing scheme to reassure Brussels - giving them the option to avoid a contract that would expose them to volatile prices swings in energy markets, the draft said.

If European energy prices were to spike to extreme levels again, the Commission suggested allowing national governments to temporarily intervene to fix prices while weighing emergency measures to limit prices where needed, and offer consumers and small businesses a share of their electricity at a lower price.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

Renewable Energy Cost Trends highlight IRENA data showing solar and wind undercut coal, as utility-scale projects drive lower levelized electricity costs worldwide, with the Middle East and UAE advancing mega solar parks.

Key Points

They track how solar and wind undercut new fossil fuels as utility-scale costs drop and investment accelerates.

✅ IRENA reports renewables cheapest for new installations

✅ Solar and wind LCOE fell sharply since 2010

✅ Middle East and UAE scale mega utility projects

Renewable energy is now the cheapest option for new electricity installation in most of the world, a report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) on Tuesday said.

Renewable power projects have undercut traditional coal fuel plants, with solar and wind power costs in particular falling as record-breaking growth continues worldwide.

“Installing new renewables increasingly costs less than the cheapest fossil fuels. With or without the health and economic crisis, dirty coal plants were overdue to be consigned to the past, said Francesco La Camera, director-general of IRENA said in the report.

In 2019, renewables accounted for around 72 percent of all new capacity added worldwide, IRENA said, following a 2016 record year that highlighted the momentum, with lowering costs and technological improvements in solar and wind power helping this dynamic. For solar energy, IRENA notes that the cost for electricity from utility-scale plants fell by 82 percent in the decade between 2010 and 2019, as China's solar PV growth underscored in 2016.

“More than half of the renewable capacity added in 2019 achieved lower electricity costs than new coal, while new solar and wind projects are also undercutting the cheapest and least sustainable of existing coal-fired plants,” Camera added.

Costs for solar and wind power also fell year-on-year by 13 and 9 percent, respectively, with offshore wind costs showing steep declines as well. In 2019, more than half of all newly commissioned utility-scale renewable power plants provided electricity cheaper than the lowest cost of a new fossil fuel plant.

The Middle East

In mid-May, a report by UK-based law firm Ashurst suggested the Middle East is the second most popular region for renewable energy investment after North America, at a time when clean energy investment is outpacing fossil fuels.

The region is home to some of the largest renewable energy bets in the world, with Saudi wind expansion gathering pace. The UAE, for instance, is currently developing the Mohammed Bin Rashid Solar Park, the world’s largest concentrated solar power project in the world.

Around 26 percent of Middle East respondents in Ashurst’s survey said that they were presently investing in energy transition, marking the region as the most popular for current investment in renewables, while 11 percent added that they were considering investing.

In North America, the most popular region, 28 percent said that they were currently investing, with 11 percent stating they are considering investing.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Renewable Energy News

Estonia energy prices 2021 show sharp electricity hikes versus the EU average, mixed natural gas trends, kWh tariffs on Nord Pool spiking, and VAT, taxes, and support measures shaping household bills.

Key Points

EU-high electricity growth, early gas dip, then Nord Pool spikes; taxes, VAT, and subsidies shaped energy bills.

✅ Electricity up 7% on year; EU average 2.8% in H1 2021.

✅ Gas fell 1% in H1; later spiked with global market.

✅ VAT, taxes, excise and aid impacted household costs.

Estonia saw one of the highest rates in growth of electricity prices in the first half of 2021, compared with the same period in key trends in 2020 across Europe. These figures were posted before the more recent, record level of electricity and natural gas prices; the latter actually dropped slightly in Estonia in the first half of the year.

While electricity prices rose 7 percent on year in the first half of 2021 in Estonia, the average for the EU as a whole, where energy prices drove inflation across the bloc, stood at 2.8 percent over the same period, BNS reports.

Hungary (€10 per 100 Kwh) and Bulgaria (€10.20 per 100 Kwh) saw the lowest electricity prices EU-wide, while at €31.9 per KWH, Germany's power prices posted the most expensive rate, while Denmark, Belgium and Ireland also had high prices, in excess of €25 per Kwh.

Slovenia saw the highest electricity price rise, at 15 percent, and even the United States' electricity prices saw their steepest rise in decades during the same era, while Estonia was in third place, joint with Romania at 7 percent as noted, and behind Poland (8 percent).

Lithuania, on the other hand, experienced the third highest electricity price fall over the first half of 2021, compared with the same period in 2020, at 6 percent, behind only Cyprus (7 percent) and the Netherlands (10 percent, largely due to a tax cut).

Urmas Reinsalu: VAT on electricity, gas and heating needs to be lowered
The EU average price of electricity was €21.9 percent per Kwh, with taxes and excise accounting for 39 percent of this, even as prices in Spain surged across the day-ahead market.

Estonia has also seen severe electricity price rises in the second half of the year so far, with records set and then promptly broken several times earlier in October, while an Irish electricity provider raised prices amid similar pressures, and a support package for low income households rolled out for the winter season (October to March next year). The price on the Nord Pool market as of €95.01 per Kwh; a day earlier it had stood at €66.21 per Kwh, while on October 19 the price was €140.68 per Kwh.

Gas prices
Natural gas prices to household, meanwhile, dropped in Estonia over the same period, at a sharper rate (1 percent) than the EU average (0.5 percent), according to Eurostat.

Gas prices across the EU were lowest in Lithuania (€2.8 per 100 Kwh) and highest in the Netherlands (€9.6 per KWH), while the highest growth was seen in Denmark (19 percent), in the first half of 2021.

Natural gas prices dropped in 20 member states, however, with the largest drop again coming in Lithuania (23 percent).

The average price of natural gas EU-side in the first half of 2021 was €6.4, and taxes and excise duties accounted on average for 36 percent of the total.

The second half of the year has seen steep gas price rises in Estonia, largely the result of increases on the world market, though European gas benchmarks later fell to pre-Ukraine war levels.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

Proton Conducting Fuel Cells enable reversible hydrogen energy storage, coupling electrolyzers and fuel cells with ceramic catalysts and proton-conducting membranes to convert wind and solar electricity into fuel and back to reliable grid power.

Key Points

Proton conducting fuel cells store renewable power as hydrogen and generate electricity using reversible catalysts.

✅ Reversible electrolysis and fuel-cell operation in one device

✅ Ceramic air electrodes hit up to 98% splitting efficiency

✅ Scalable path to low-cost grid energy storage with hydrogen

If we want a shot at transitioning to renewable energy, we’ll need one crucial thing: technologies that can convert electricity from wind, sun, and even electricity from raindrops into a chemical fuel for storage and vice versa. Commercial devices that do this exist, but most are costly and perform only half of the equation. Now, researchers have created lab-scale gadgets that do both jobs. If larger versions work as well, they would help make it possible—or at least more affordable—to run the world on renewables.

The market for such technologies has grown along with renewables: In 2007, solar and wind provided just 0.8% of all power in the United States; in 2017, that number was 8%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But the demand for electricity often doesn’t match the supply from solar and wind, a key reason why the U.S. grid isn't 100% renewable today. In sunny California, for example, solar panels regularly produce more power than needed in the middle of the day, but none at night, after most workers and students return home.

Some utilities are beginning to install massive banks of cheaper solar batteries in hopes of storing excess energy and evening out the balance sheet. But batteries are costly and store only enough energy to back up the grid for a few hours at most. Another option is to store the energy by converting it into hydrogen fuel. Devices called electrolyzers do this by using electricity—ideally from solar and wind power—to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas, a carbon-free fuel. A second set of devices called fuel cells can then convert that hydrogen back to electricity to power cars, trucks, and buses, or to feed it to the grid.

But commercial electrolyzers and fuel cells use different catalysts to speed up the two reactions, meaning a single device can’t do both jobs. To get around this, researchers have been experimenting with a newer type of fuel cell, called a proton conducting fuel cell (PCFC), which can make fuel or convert it back into electricity using just one set of catalysts.

PCFCs consist of two electrodes separated by a membrane that allows protons across. At the first electrode, known as the air electrode, steam and electricity are fed into a ceramic catalyst, which splits the steam’s water molecules into positively charged hydrogen ions (protons), electrons, and oxygen molecules. The electrons travel through an external wire to the second electrode—the fuel electrode—where they meet up with the protons that crossed through the membrane. There, a nickel-based catalyst stitches them together to make hydrogen gas (H2). In previous PCFCs, the nickel catalysts performed well, but the ceramic catalysts were inefficient, using less than 70% of the electricity to split the water molecules. Much of the energy was lost as heat.

Now, two research teams have made key strides in improving this efficiency, and a new fuel cell concept brings biological design ideas into the mix. They both focused on making improvements to the air electrode, because the nickel-based fuel electrode did a good enough job. In January, researchers led by chemist Sossina Haile at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, reported in Energy & Environmental Science that they came up with a fuel electrode made from a ceramic alloy containing six elements that harnessed 76% of its electricity to split water molecules. And in today’s issue of Nature Energy, Ryan O’Hayre, a chemist at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, reports that his team has done one better. Their ceramic alloy electrode, made up of five elements, harnesses as much as 98% of the energy it’s fed to split water.

When both teams run their setups in reverse, the fuel electrode splits H2 molecules into protons and electrons. The electrons travel through an external wire to the air electrode—providing electricity to power devices. When they reach the electrode, they combine with oxygen from the air and protons that crossed back over the membrane to produce water.

The O’Hayre group’s latest work is “impressive,” Haile says. “The electricity you are putting in is making H2 and not heating up your system. They did a really good job with that.” Still, she cautions, both her new device and the one from the O’Hayre lab are small laboratory demonstrations. For the technology to have a societal impact, researchers will need to scale up the button-size devices, a process that typically reduces performance. If engineers can make that happen, the cost of storing renewable energy could drop precipitously, thereby moving us closer to cheap abundant electricity at scale, helping utilities do away with their dependence on fossil fuels.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Renewable Energy News

Site C Dam Controversy highlights Peace River risks, BC Hydro claims, Indigenous rights under Treaty 8, environmental assessment findings, and potential impacts to agriculture and the Peace-Athabasca Delta across Alberta and the Northwest Territories.

Key Points

Debate over BC Hydro's Site C dam: clean energy vs Indigenous rights, Peace-Athabasca Delta impacts, and agriculture.

✅ Potential drying of Peace-Athabasca Delta and wildlife habitat

✅ Treaty 8 rights and First Nations legal challenges

✅ Loss of prime Peace Valley farmland; alternatives in renewables

One of the leading opponents of the Site C dam in northeastern B.C. is sharing her concerns with northerners this week.

Proponents of the Site C dam say it will be a cost-effective source of clean electricity, even as a major Alberta wind farm was scrapped elsewhere in Canada, and that it will be able to produce enough energy to power the equivalent of 450,000 homes per year in B.C. But a number of Indigenous groups and environmentalists are against the project.

Wendy Holm is an economist and agronomist who did an environmental assessment of the dam focusing on its potential impacts on agriculture.

On Tuesday she spoke at a town hall presentation in Fort Smith, N.W.T., organized by the Slave River Coalition. She is also speaking at an event in Yellowknife on Friday, as small modular reactors in Yukon receive study as a potential long-term option.

Worried about downstream impacts, Northern leaders urge action on Site C dam

"I learned that people outside of British Columbia are as concerned with this dam as we are," Holm said.

"There's just a lot of concern with what's happening on the Peace River and this dam and the implications for Alberta, where hydro's share has diminished in recent decades, and the Northwest Territories."

If completed, BC Hydro's Site C energy project will be the third dam on the Peace River in northeast B.C. and the largest public works project in B.C. history. The $10.7-billion project was approved by both the provincial and federal governments as B.C. moves to streamline clean energy permitting for future projects.

Amy Lusk, co-ordinator of the Slave River Coalition, said many issues were discussed at the town hall, but she also left with a sense of hope.

"I think sometimes in our little corner of the world, we are up against so much when it comes to industrial development and threats to our water," she said.

"To kind of take away that message of, this is not a done deal, and that we do have a few options in place to try and stop this and not to lose hope, I think was a very important message for the community."

Drying of the Peace-Athabasca Delta

Holm said her main concern for the Northwest Territories is how it could affect the Peace-Athabasca Delta. She said the two dams already on the river are responsible for two-thirds of the drying that's happening in the delta.

"These are very real issues and very present in the minds of northerners who want to stay connected to a traditional lifestyle, want to have access to those wild foods," she said.

Lusk said northerners are fed up with defending waters "time after time after time."

BC Hydro, however, said studies commissioned during the environmental assessment of Site C show the project will have no measurable effect on the delta, which is located 1,100 kilometres away.

Holm said the fight against the Site C dam is also important when it comes to First Nations treaty rights.

The West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations applied for an injunction to halt construction on Site C, as well as a treaty infringement lawsuit against the B.C. government. They argue the dam would cause irreparable harm to their territories and way of life, which are rights protected under Treaty 8.

Agricultural land

While the project is located in B.C., Holm said its impacts on prime horticulture land would also affect northerners, something that's important given issues of food security and nutrition.

"This is some of the best agriculture land in all of Canada," she said of the Peace Valley.

According to BC Hydro, around 2.6 million hectares of land in the Peace agricultural region would remain available for agricultural production while 3,800 hectares would be unavailable. It has also proposed a number of mitigation efforts, including a $20-million agricultural compensation fund.

Holm said renewable energy, including tidal energy for remote communities, will be cheaper and less destructive than the dam, and there's a connection between the dams on the Peace River and water sharing with the U.S.

"When you run out of water there's nothing else you can use. You can't use orange juice to irrigate your fields or to run your industries or to power your homes," she said.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Overhead T&D News