Nearly 200 countries committed last year, during COP28, to rapidly improving their energy efficiency, but this was not the case in 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned on Thursday ), five days before COP29.
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The IEA has measured that energy efficiency will improve by only 1% this year, in other words no better than in 2023, worse than between 2010 and 2019, and above all far from the objective of 4% in 2030, to which countries committed at the 2023 annual UN climate conference.
While progress has been made on energy efficiency in response to the global energy crisis, the improvement has since largely stalled, laments the IEA.
In the carbon neutrality scenario by 2050, improving energy efficiency – that is, using less energy to produce as much – could contribute to more than 70% of the reduction in energy demand. oil and 50% for gas by 2030, notes the IEA.
The agency calls for further measures to be taken. She points out, for example, that almost half of the surface area built around the world is still not subject to efficiency requirements.
Likewise, barely three out of five electric motors used worldwide are subject to minimum energy performance standards.
“The measures to be taken and the technologies to accelerate progress in efficiency are already known, and many governments are taking important steps in this direction,” said the executive director of the IEA, Fatih Birol, quoted in a press release . He takes the example of heat pumps and electric cars, “which generally consume much less energy than the technologies they replace”.
“What we hope to see now are faster and stronger policy responses across the world,” he added.
Dave Jones, director of the outlook program at the think tank Ember, said: “It will be very difficult to move away from fossil fuels if global energy demand grows out of control, and energy efficiency plays a key role in reducing it.” .
Azerbaijan will host COP29, dedicated to climate finance, from November 11 to 22.
