TotalEnergies Publishes Its Annual Report on Scenarios of the Global Energy System’s Evolution

To bring its contribution to the public debate around the energy transition, TotalEnergies (Paris:TTE) (LSE:TTE) (NYSE:TTE) publishes the 7^th edition of its "TotalEnergies Energy Outlook", which presents an overview of the energy system and scenarios for its evolution up to 2050. (Documents available at this link).

Access to energy is essential to meet development needs

Today, there are still around 4.6 billion people that lack access to a level of energy that is deemed necessary for satisfactory human development, particularly in terms of access to healthcare and education. Our collective challenge is therefore to meet this legitimate demand for energy for the populations of emerging countries, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. More energy, less emissions.

The stakes are clear: we must collectively reduce emissions from electricity generation, the leading global source of energy-related emissions with 14 billion tons of CO₂ per year, and reduce the carbon intensity of transportation (the second-largest source of emissions) and heat generation for industrial and residential use.

What has happened since the Paris Agreement in 2015?

The carbon intensity of the global energy system is decreasing

Energy demand has continued to grow, accompanying rising living standards in China and emerging countries. CO₂ emissions have also increased, but the growth in CO₂ emissions has slowed since 2015, illustrating the deepening “decoupling” between growth in energy demand and lower growth in emissions: the carbon intensity of the energy mix has improved. Even though the world is still in an "energy addition" phase, the transition is already underway in developed countries and is approaching in other countries, particularly China.

This transition is supported by the significant penetration of renewables in global electricity generation, which accounted for almost 80% of global electricity production growth between 2023 and 2024. It is also supported, in developed countries, by the gradual reduction in coal-fired electricity generation, which is being replaced by gas-fired electricity generation, particularly in the United States.

The differences in trajectories between the major regional blocks are becoming more pronounced, with common challenges around energy security and affordability.

Against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical tensions and rivalries, different regions of the world are increasingly following different paths.

The United States has not only achieved energy independence thanks to shale oil and gas, but also became a net exporter of gas in 2017 and petroleum products in 2020. It has taken advantage of its abundant domestic gas production at competitive prices to reduce its CO₂ emissions by gradually replacing coal-fired power plants with gas-fired power plants.