IEA Global Energy Review 2026 — The Definitive Reference

1. What the Global Energy Review Is

The Global Energy Review is the International Energy Agency’s annual assessment of global energy supply, demand, technology deployment, and energy-related CO₂ emissions for the prior calendar year. It is published each April with a release lag of approximately four months from year-end, drawing on the latest available national energy statistics, IEA member country submissions, primary data from IRENA, the IAEA Power Reactor Information System (PRIS), BloombergNEF, and the IEA’s own surveys of power-sector and industrial operators.

For corporate GHG accounting practitioners, GER plays a specific and irreplaceable role: it is the source of the country-level electricity grid emission factors used in location-based Scope 2 reporting for every country that does not maintain its own authoritative factor set. The United Kingdom has DEFRA, the United States has EPA eGRID, France has Base Carbone, Australia has the National Greenhouse Accounts Factors, and Singapore has the Energy Market Authority Grid Emission Factor — but the vast majority of countries in a multinational corporate’s Scope 2 inventory have no equivalent. For those countries, IEA grid factors derived from the Global Energy Review are the default that the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance, CSRD ESRS E1 limited assurance providers, SBTi target validators, and CDP scorers all accept as authoritative.

The Global Energy Review is published as a free, downloadable PDF report (approximately 100 pages in the 2026 edition) plus a downloadable Excel dataset released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. The CC BY 4.0 licensing is consequential for downstream users including GreenCalculus: the underlying data can be redistributed, integrated into calculator code, and rendered on partner platforms with attribution, without separate licensing arrangements with the IEA. This is unusually permissive for an authoritative international data source and is one reason GER has become the dominant cross-jurisdiction grid factor reference.

2. Chain of Custody — From IEA Publication to Corporate Inventory

Every Scope 2 figure in a multinational corporate’s GHG inventory that relies on IEA grid factors traces back through a specific chain. The mapping below is the one any audit committee member, head of sustainability, or assurance partner should be able to draw before signing off on a global Scope 2 disclosure.

3. What GER Is — and What It Is Not

GER is frequently conflated with the IEA’s other flagship publications, particularly the World Energy Outlook. The distinctions matter operationally because using the wrong document in a methodology statement produces ambiguous or unsupportable citations.

What GER is: a backward-looking statistical assessment of what actually happened in the global energy system during the prior calendar year. The data is real (where available) or modelled estimates of real activity (for the most recent quarter where official data has not yet been published). The narrative interpretation accompanying the data identifies the drivers of observed trends — cyclical weather effects, structural technology shifts, policy interventions, geopolitical events — without projecting forward beyond the data year.

What GER is not: a forward-looking scenario projection. The IEA’s forward scenarios are published in the World Energy Outlook (WEO), released each October, which models energy demand, technology deployment, and CO₂ emissions out to 2050 under multiple scenarios (Stated Policies Scenario, Announced Pledges Scenario, Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario). Citing “the IEA” for a 2030 or 2050 figure is almost always citing WEO, not GER. Citing “the IEA” for a 2025 figure is almost always citing GER, not WEO.

The four IEA flagship publications that practitioners regularly encounter and conflate:

4. The GER 2026 Headline — What 2025 Looked Like

The Global Energy Review 2026 documents a global energy system that grew more slowly than recent years on the aggregate, while the underlying technology mix shifted decisively. Solar PV passed a structural threshold; coal and gas grew but at slower rates than 2024; energy-related CO₂ emissions grew at their slowest rate in years; and the divergence in growth between advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies inverted for the first time since the 1990s.

Source: IEA Global Energy Review 2026, Key findings and Global trends chapters; IEA Global Energy Review 2026 Dataset (CC BY 4.0). All figures cover calendar year 2025.

5. Global Energy Demand by Fuel — Where Growth Came From

All major fuels and technologies grew in 2025, but at very different rates. Solar PV alone met more than a quarter of total demand growth. Natural gas, oil, coal, and bioenergy all contributed, but at progressively smaller shares than recent historical patterns. The 2025 fuel-share distribution is the visible signal of a system in transition.

5.1 Fuel-Level Detail

Source: IEA Global Energy Review 2026, Global trends and individual fuel chapters. mb/d = million barrels per day. Mt = million tonnes.

6. Electricity Demand and Generation — The Age of Electricity

Electricity demand grew at well over twice the rate of total energy demand in 2025 — 3% versus 1.3% — adding around 800 TWh. The IEA characterises this as a structural pattern: the world has entered “the Age of Electricity,” with end uses progressively electrifying across buildings, transport, and industry. Demand growth was driven by data centres (especially in the US, where strong AI infrastructure investment lifted national electricity demand to its second-highest growth rate since 2000 outside post-recession rebounds), robust industrial growth, and electric vehicle uptake.

Two trends dominated the supply side. Solar PV posted its largest-ever annual generation increase — 600 TWh added, taking total solar PV generation to nearly 2,700 TWh and pushing the global solar PV share past 8% of total electricity generation. The flipside was a global decline in coal-fired generation, with strong renewables growth in China and India both squeezing coal use in electricity generation despite increases in other sectors.

7. Regional Breakdown — Who Drove 2025 Growth

Aggregate global numbers conceal substantial regional divergence. Three of the eight major regions accounted for almost the entirety of net growth in absolute terms (China, US, EU); India slowed sharply on cyclical weather effects; Africa and the Middle East continued steady expansion. The pattern is operationally consequential for corporate Scope 2 inventories because the grid intensity trajectory in each region is materially different.

8. Energy-Related CO₂ Emissions — The 2025 Picture

Global energy-related CO₂ emissions grew by approximately 0.4% in 2025 — the slowest growth rate in years and well below the demand growth rate, indicating continued decarbonisation per unit of energy delivered. Underneath the aggregate, the regional breakdown produced a historically significant inversion: emissions from advanced economies grew faster (+0.5%) than those from emerging market and developing economies (+0.3%) for the first time since the 1990s.

The divergence is driven by three structural factors. First, China‘s CO₂ emissions fell in 2025 due to the renewables boom, structural declines in energy-intensive industry, and overall slower demand growth. Second, India‘s energy-related CO₂ emissions were flat for the first time since the 1970s, driven by the strong monsoon’s cyclical effect on hydropower output combined with structural renewables expansion. Third, in the advanced economies, a cold winter and elevated natural gas prices pushed up emissions — particularly in the US where gas-to-coal switching in power generation added 10% to coal use, reversing a multi-year decline.

The IEA estimates that clean energy technologies deployed since 2019 have avoided more than 35 exajoules of annual fossil fuel demand in 2025 — equivalent to approximately 7% of global fossil fuel use. This counterfactual figure is the cumulative impact of solar PV, wind, EVs, heat pumps, and battery storage deployments that did not exist or were not yet at scale six years earlier.

9. Country-Level Grid Emission Factors — The Reference Table

The single most operationally consequential output of the Global Energy Review for corporate GHG accounting is the country-level grid emission factor dataset. The table below lists 40+ country-level location-based factors in kg CO₂e/kWh as used in GreenCalculus MasterBrain v2025.6 sourced from IEA 2026 (or, where a national authoritative source exists and is operationally preferred, the national source is shown alongside).

Highlighted rows are factors currently live in the GreenCalculus MasterBrain. The remaining countries are either pending v2025.7 integration or are covered by their own dedicated national factor pages (UK via DEFRA, US via EPA eGRID).

Values are the IEA Global Energy Review 2026 figures of record, as previously reproduced in GreenCalculus MasterBrain v2025.6 (May 2026) under source tag IEA_2026 for all entries except GB (DEFRA 2025) and US (EPA 2024 eGRID2022-derived); the live MasterBrain now serves Ember Yearly Electricity 2025 values for these countries. The full IEA dataset for additional countries is available at the IEA Global Energy Review 2026 page under CC BY 4.0; integration into GreenCalculus calculators for those countries is queued for MasterBrain v2025.7. The complete IEA grid factor data page publishes the live dataset.

10. How GER Plugs Into Corporate GHG Inventory Work

GER’s role in a corporate GHG inventory is specific and well-defined. It is not a universal source; it slots into the inventory at three precise points, with each application governed by the relevant accounting standard.

10.1 Scope 2 Location-Based Reporting

Under the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance (2015), every Scope 2 inventory must report a location-based figure reflecting the average grid emission intensity in the geographic area where electricity consumption occurred. For US facilities, the EPA eGRID subregion factor is the authoritative source. For UK facilities, DEFRA. For French facilities, Base Carbone. For most other countries, IEA grid factors derived from the Global Energy Review fill the gap. The hierarchy is well-defined: use the national authoritative source where one exists and is appropriate; use IEA for the remainder.

10.2 Scope 3 Upstream Energy Calculations

For Scope 3 Category 3 (Fuel- and Energy-Related Activities not included in Scope 1 or 2), GER provides the country-level electricity emission factor that feeds T&D loss calculations for non-US countries (the US case is covered by EPA eGRID grid gross loss data). For Scope 3 Category 1 (Purchased Goods and Services) spend-based methodologies that incorporate electricity intensity of supplier countries, GER provides the energy intensity inputs.

10.3 Transition Plan and Scenario Disclosure

Under CSRD ESRS E1 paragraph 16 (climate transition plan disclosure) and IFRS S2 paragraph 14 (climate-related risks and opportunities), corporates must disclose the strategic context for their decarbonisation plan. GER provides the sectoral baseline data — renewable share trajectory, solar PV deployment rate, EV penetration, regional grid decarbonisation trajectories — against which a corporate’s own plan can be benchmarked. This is GER’s narrative use case, distinct from its numerical-factor use case.

11. Interaction with GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance

The GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance (2015) introduced the dual reporting requirement: every Scope 2 inventory must report both a location-based figure (reflecting average grid intensity) and a market-based figure (reflecting contractual instruments — PPAs, RECs, supplier-specific factors). GER’s role is exclusively in the location-based half. The market-based half draws from contractual instruments and, where no instrument exists, from residual mix factors that GER does not publish.

The Scope 2 Guidance establishes a quality hierarchy for location-based factors: (a) most granular publicly available factor for the geographic area where consumption occurred, (b) consistent with the consumption period, (c) reflecting the grid mix at the point of generation. For the United States, this means the EPA eGRID subregion factor (Level 3 in the eGRID hierarchy — see eGRID reference). For the United Kingdom, this means the DEFRA UK grid factor. For most other countries, the IEA country-level factor is the most granular publicly available authoritative source.

One nuance frequently missed in methodology statements: GER factors are at the national or regional level only. They do not provide subnational granularity for countries that have it (Canadian provincial factors are published by Environment and Climate Change Canada; Indian state factors by the Central Electricity Authority; Brazilian regional factors by Empresa de Pesquisa Energética). Where subnational factors exist and are operationally appropriate, they should be used in preference to the IEA national figure. The IEA factor is the default when subnational granularity is not available or not material.

12. Interaction with CSRD / ESRS E1 and IFRS S2

CSRD ESRS E1 (climate change) and IFRS S2 (climate-related disclosures) are the two dominant mandatory climate disclosure frameworks in 2026 practice, and both rely on GER as a reference for cross-jurisdiction Scope 2 calculations and for the sectoral context underlying transition plan disclosures.

Under ESRS E1, corporates in scope must disclose Scope 1, Scope 2, and material Scope 3 emissions (paragraphs 44, 45, 46 in the consolidated ESRS E1 text). For multinational groups, the location-based Scope 2 disclosure draws on national factor sources where available and IEA factors elsewhere — the same dual hierarchy as the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance. ESRS E1 paragraph 64 covers the climate transition plan; GER provides the sectoral and regional baseline context that paragraph 64 disclosures benchmark against. The dedicated CSRD ESRS E1 reference covers the disclosure framework in full.

Under IFRS S2, corporates in adopting jurisdictions must disclose Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions under paragraph 29, using the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard unless required to use a different method by jurisdictional authority. IEA GER factors feed the cross-jurisdiction Scope 2 calculation in the same way they do for CSRD. IFRS S2 paragraph 14 (climate-related risks and opportunities) and paragraph 22 (climate-related metrics and targets) both benefit from the sectoral context GER provides. The IFRS S2 reference covers the standard in full.

13. Interaction with SBTi Sector Pathways

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) sector pathway models for power, industry, and transport calibrate against historical IEA data — specifically GER (for the most recent year) and the historical IEA World Energy Balances (for the multi-year backcast). When a corporate submits a target for SBTi validation, the sector-specific decarbonisation trajectory the target is benchmarked against is the SBTi sector pathway, which is itself anchored on IEA historical and scenario data.

The 2025 GER data — solar PV crossing 8% of global generation, 600 TWh annual increase in solar, 800 GW renewable additions, 20 million EV sales — will feed the next SBTi sector pathway recalibration cycle. Corporates with SBTi-validated targets already in place should not see immediate changes, but corporates submitting new targets in 2026–2027 will be benchmarked against pathways that incorporate the GER 2026 data. The SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard reference covers the target-setting framework in full.

14. The 2020–2025 Trend — What Six Years Tell Us

A single annual GER edition tells you what happened in one year. The pattern across multiple editions tells you the trajectory. The 2020 GER documented the COVID-19 demand collapse; the 2021 edition documented the rebound; subsequent editions have documented the structural shift underway. Six headline indicators tracked across GER editions:

Earlier-year figures reproduced as published in the GER edition covering that year; subject to subsequent revisions in later editions. Use the GER edition for the specific data year being cited rather than treating later-edition revisions as definitive for past years.

The pattern is consistent. Renewable capacity additions have nearly tripled over six years. Solar PV generation has more than tripled. Energy-related CO₂ growth has decelerated from the post-COVID rebound to its slowest rate in years. Electricity demand has accelerated relative to total energy demand. None of these trajectories suggest the global energy system has stopped emitting, but they document a system that is structurally changing — and the GER edition for any given year is the authoritative annual record of that change.

15. How IEA Compiles GER — Methodology Notes

For practitioners citing GER in methodology statements, the IEA’s own methodology — data sources, estimation approach, and revision conventions — is worth knowing. The Global Energy Review draws on:

• National statistics. Annual energy balances reported by national statistical offices, energy ministries, and grid operators, channelled through UN Statistical Division and IEA member-country reporting.
• IEA member surveys. Quarterly and annual surveys of IEA member country energy data including primary supply, electricity generation by source, and energy-related CO₂ emissions.
• IRENA data. Renewable capacity additions and generation, particularly for non-IEA-member countries.
• IAEA PRIS database. Nuclear capacity, generation, and outage data — cited explicitly in GER 2026 as accessed 25 March 2026 for the report.
• BloombergNEF. Technology deployment data, particularly for battery storage and EV sales.
• Industry sources and IEA estimation. Where official data is not yet available for the most recent months of the data year, the IEA produces modelled estimates based on partial-year actuals and projections.

The estimation versus actuals distinction matters for users of the GER 2026 data: figures for the early months of 2025 are largely official; figures for the late months of 2025 may incorporate IEA estimation; figures may be revised in subsequent GER editions as official data becomes available. For corporate GHG inventory use, the GER edition matching the corporate reporting year is the operative reference; subsequent revisions in later GER editions are not normally retrofitted into past-year inventories unless the revision is material and the inventory is being restated for other reasons.

16. Common Misuses of GER Data

Eight patterns of GER misuse that surface routinely in corporate methodology statements and assurance findings:

17. GreenCalculus Implementation — Provenance Chain

The Global Energy Review 2026 dataset is integrated into the GreenCalculus MasterBrain as 30+ country-level grid emission factor entries under the grid section. MasterBrain v2025.6 (released 9 May 2026) tags every IEA-sourced factor with source='IEA_2026' and year=2026, with the underlying data year (2025) implicit in the GER 2026 edition citation.

18. Limitations and Uncertainty

GER is the best available global annual energy stocktake, but it has known limitations that practitioners should be transparent about in methodology statements.

• Estimation vs actuals. The latest months of any data year may incorporate IEA modelled estimates rather than official statistics. Revisions in subsequent GER editions are normal and expected.
• National data lag. For some non-OECD countries, the latest official annual statistics may be from a year or more earlier than the GER data year. The IEA bridges this gap with estimation; the underlying confidence is correspondingly lower than for OECD countries with timely reporting.
• Subnational granularity. GER publishes at national level (with selected regional aggregations). Large countries with significant intra-national variation (US, Canada, India, China, Brazil) require national authoritative subnational sources for full granularity; the IEA national figure averages over that variation.
• CO₂-only emphasis. GER’s emissions analysis focuses on energy-related CO₂. Non-CO₂ emissions from energy systems (methane leakage from oil and gas production and distribution, N₂O from biomass and combustion) are treated separately by other IEA publications.
• Inventory boundaries vs energy statistics. The IEA reports on the energy system; corporate Scope 2 reporting uses these data but applies inventory boundaries (operational vs equity-share consolidation, market-based vs location-based instruments) that the IEA itself does not address. Translation between the two domains requires the analyst’s judgement.

19. Update Cadence and Future Editions

GER has been published annually since 2020 (the inaugural Global Energy Review 2020 was the COVID-19 response edition tracking the demand collapse), each released in spring covering the prior calendar year. The release pattern:

The April release cadence is now well-established and is the working assumption corporate sustainability calendars build around. Inventories filed in Q2 or later in a given year typically incorporate the GER edition released that same April; inventories filed in Q1 typically still cite the prior year’s GER edition with a methodology note explaining the citation choice.

20. Frequently Asked Questions

Related GreenCalculus References