IEA World Outlook: Six Key Trends Shaping the Energy Future
New technologies and discoveries are redrawing the global energy map, says the International Energy Agency. But the world is slow to curb its fossil fuel dependence.
And by the mid-2020s, the Middle East—the world's only source of low-cost oil—will again be unchallenged as the most important and influential source of oil supply on the globe.
The Paris-based IEA was established after the oil crisis of the early 1970s in a move by oil-consuming nations to keep better track of trends and improve energy security. Its annual World Energy Outlook, with hundreds of pages of analysis and charts, is considered the industry bible. Here's a rundown of key trends IEA identified as shaping the world outlook this year:
A year ago, IEA upended global conventional wisdom by declaring that the United States, thanks to unconventional technologies like fracking, would overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer of
