Electricity demand will rise much faster than overall energy growth in the coming decades, underscoring the need for diversified energy sources, according to an analysis released Wednesday.

The report by the International Energy Agency ˛ő˛šžąťĺĚýrenewable energy, led by solar power, will grow faster than any other major source in the next few years. One scenario the agency anticipates is coal and oil demand peaking globally by the end of this decade — but the group also said global oil and gas demand could continue growing until 2050. The report noted that many natural gas projects were approved in 2025, due to changes in U.S. policy, indicating worldwide supply will rise even as questions remain about how it will be used. Meanwhile, global nuclear power capacity is set to increase by at least a third by 2035 after being stagnant for years.

The release of the annual World Energy Outlook coincided with U.N. negotiations in Brazil, where global leaders this week are calling for ways to curb climate change.

The IEA says building greater resilience in energy systems is especially important as data centers, heating and cooling, electrification and more drive energy demand. Investment in data centers is expected to reach $580 billion this year, exceeding investment in the oil supply, according to the report.

Growing economies including India and nations in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, will “increasingly shape energy market dynamics in the years,” the IEA said, noting their potential for solar power.

China, meanwhile, has accounted for half the global growth in demand for oil and gas, and more than half for electricity, since 2010.

“In a break from the trend of the past decade, the increase in electricity consumption is no longer limited to emerging and developing economies,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol stated in a release. Electricity use is also rising in advanced economies, according to Birol.

Nations are grappling with meeting demand while preparing for the risks brought on by climate change. The IEA says the world is falling short on universal energy access and climate change goals. Around 730 million people still live without electricity, according to the IEA, and despite progress, nearly one-quarter of the global population still relies on inefficient cooking methods that hurt their health or the environment. 2024 was also the hottest year on record.

Nations should diversify their energy sources and cooperate to expand supply chains for critical minerals used to make things like batteries for electric vehicles and components for solar and wind power generation, the IEA said. This also includes making quick improvements to the grid, energy storage and broader infrastructure.

“When we look at the history of the energy world in recent decades, there is no other time when energy security tensions have applied to so many fuels and technologies at once,” Birol said. “With energy security front and (center) for many governments, their responses need to consider the synergies and trade-offs that can arise with other policy goals — on affordability, access, competitiveness and climate change.”

The IEA brought back an approach to this year’s outlook using what it calls current policies. It used this approach in 2019 to weigh different possible global energy outcomes, before better aligning with clean energy transition plans. This year the agency’s outlook includes the possibility of essentially regressing on the phase-out of fossil fuels.

In a conference call Wednesday, Birol said: “We will still use oil. We will still use gas. But the growth of electricity demand is spectacular.”

He noted the role transportation plays in accounting for 45 percent of global oil consumption, for example. “How the electrification of the transportation takes place, especially in countries beyond China and Europe, will determine the shape of the oil demand and growth.”

Wednesday’s edition of the yearly report is the first released since the start of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. Trump’s administration has for a second time opted out of the Paris agreement, rolled back dozens of climate regulations, slashed federal support for renewable energies such as wind and solar power and is reversing the “endangerment finding” that sits at the core of U.S. climate policy.

Trump has pledged his support instead to the fossil fuel industry, investing in coal and loosening restrictions on pollution.

But energy analysts said the shift to clean power is happening regardless of climate policy around the world.

“The evidence on the ground is overwhelming,” said Dave Jones, chief analyst at global energy think tank Ember. “EV sales are taking off in many emerging countries, solar is permeating even through the Middle East. Renewables and electrification will dominate the future.”

Maria Pastukhova, energy transition program lead at climate change think tank E3G, said the report makes “the choices for the global energy system and the global economy unambiguous.”

Others, however, were critical of how the outlook addressed oil and gas. Ben Backwell, CEO of the Global Wind Energy Council, said the outlook does not fully capture the momentum in renewables, and that it should have emphasized the trajectory for renewable energy is accelerating, driven by the decreasing cost of the technologies, strong policy support and the move toward electrification.

“We’re accelerating,” he added. “You can see it all around the world and we can see it in our numbers for last year, but also in our numbers for the first half of this year. It looks very, very exciting, both for wind and for solar, in fact, and for next year, even more so.”

The IEA addressed some of the criticism in the call Wednesday. It said that it sees differences economically, politically and regarding clean energy efforts across the globe, and that its analysis tries to account for those differences.

“In a nutshell, the IEA is backsliding,” said Stephan Singer, global energy senior adviser at CAN International, a global network of environmental organizations. “As a global think tank, the IEA has largely failed to represent where most countries in the (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and the developing world are, as they’re supporting net zero emissions with 98 percent CO2 emissions reductions by mid-century.”

Editor’s note: Associated Press reporters Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island, and Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru contributed to this report.

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Several groups and nonprofit organizations on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency over the cancellation of a $7 billion Solar for All program intended to make solar power accessible to more than 900,000 lower-income Americans.

They say the Trump administration‘s termination of the program was illegal and they want a federal judge to direct the EPA to reinstate it. The program is affiliated with $20 billion more in green funding also terminated under President Donald Trump that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin had characterized as a fraudulent scheme fraught with waste.

The EPA does not comment on litigation, the agency stated in an email on Monday.

The lawsuit is the latest legal action taken against the administration amid its assault on clean energy policy and related funding and programs across the country. Trump has moved to boost production of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.

The lawsuit filed in Rhode Island by the Rhode Island AFL-CIO labor organization and others — including public interest law center Rhode Island Center for Justice and nonprofit Solar United Neighbors — detailed the program’s importance for local workforces and lower-income communities looking for access to clean-energy project funding.

Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, said Monday that the program’s termination kills jobs and will drive up electricity prices.

The Solar for All money was rescinded after Trump’s massive tax and spending law passed in Congress in July. Zeldin stated via social media at the time, “the bottom line is this: EPA no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive.”

The groups argued in the lawsuit that the law only revoked climate grants not yet awarded by the EPA and that these solar funds were already awarded.

“The Trump administration’s rollback of the Solar for All program is a shameless attempt to prop up fossil fuel companies at the expense of families,” said Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, one of the nonprofit legal advocacy groups representing the plaintiffs.

“This program would provide families with low incomes access to clean, affordable solar power: energy that lowers bills, improves air quality, and keeps people safer during extreme heat,” she added in a statement.

The lawsuit cites previous EPA estimates that the program would have saved recipients about $400 each year on electricity bills and cumulatively reduced or avoided greenhouse gas emissions by over 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The $7 billion Solar for All program was part of the $27 billion “green bank,” which is formally known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. It was established in the Democrat-backed climate law passed in 2022 under former President Joe Biden.

The other $20 billion, canceled by the Trump administration in March, was slated for eight community development banks and nonprofit organizations for tens of thousands of projects to combat the effects of climate change, such as residential energy efficiency projects to larger-scale investments such as community cooling.

Groups have also sued over the cancellation of that money — with a federal judge saying they must have access to some of the funds — though recently, an appeals court ruled that federal officials can move forward with its termination.

The Trump administration has targeted a host of programs and policies dedicated to clean energy.

Just last week, the administration canceled $7.6 billion in grants for hundreds of climate-friendly projects across 16 states. It has also interfered with nearly complete offshore wind developments, moved to rescind the crucial ‘endangerment finding’ that allows climate regulation, is looking to end greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirements for large polluters, and taken a slew of other deregulatory measures.

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GALENA, Alaska — Eric Huntington built his dream cabin nestled in the wilderness of central Alaska, eventually raising two daughters there. But over the years, he learned that living in this quiet, remote village came with a hefty cost.

Every year, the Huntington family spent about $7,000 on diesel to heat the cabin during bone-chilling winters. And a few years back, a power outage at the town’s diesel plant left residents temporarily freezing in minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit. When power finally returned hours later, water pipes had frozen, leaving about two dozen homes without running water for days.

“We just didn’t open our door all morning until the lights came back on,” said Huntington, a member of the local Louden Tribe.

In Galena, a sprawling village of 400 people on the banks of the Yukon River, a community built around a former military base is shifting to clean energy to reduce its reliance on expensive, imported diesel. Local leaders say their nearly completed solar farm, along with an existing biomass plant, will boost the town’s savings and protect residents from blackouts during extreme weather. The facilities have the potential to provide clean backup power in emergencies and improve the power grid’s resiliency, all while diversifying the village’s energy sources and providing job opportunities for locals.

The projects come at a precarious time for renewable energy transition in the United States. The Trump administration has canceled billions of dollars of clean energy grants to bolster fossil fuel production, and billions of dollars more in investments have been scrapped or delayed this year. So far, the village’s federal grants for the solar array haven’t been impacted, but local leaders know the risk remains. Whatever the future of public funding, the village is an example of how renewable energies can save costs, boost reliability during extreme weather and create jobs.

Once online, the solar array will ensure that the village’s power grid has a backup system, said Tim Kalke, general manager of Sustainable Energy for Galena Alaska — or SEGA — a nonprofit that will operate it. Then a power outage won’t result in tens of thousands of dollars in repairs, he added, and heat will be guaranteed in times of extreme cold.

“You’re dealing with life, health and safety,” he said.

In May, dozens of high school students in navy blue caps and gowns stood with nervous excitement in a locker-brimmed hallway, each waiting their turn to walk through yellow tinsel into a packed auditorium. It was graduation day for Galena Interior Learning Academy.

The school’s vocational training courses and cultural offerings attract some 200 students annually from across Alaska, boosting the village’s population and energy needs.

Students here can take classes on sustainable energy, aviation, carpentry and much more. But to keep the school running — especially during long, cold winters — it needs heat.

That’s where the biomass project comes in. Every winter since 2016, trees (mostly paper birch) are locally harvested and shredded into wood chips that fuel a large boiler plant on campus, offsetting use of about 100,000 gallons of diesel annually for the school district and the city, said Brad Scotton, a Galena City Council member who also serves on SEGA’s board. It’s notable as one of the state’s first large-scale biomass plants and the most rural, he added.

Cost savings from use of biomass has allowed the Galena City School District to hire certified professionals in trade jobs and do upkeep on campus facilities, district superintendent Jason R. Johnson stated in an email.

It’s also created a local workforce, and a job base the village never used to have.

“It’s keeping the money that used to go outside within the community and providing pretty meaningful jobs for people,” Scotton said.

In rural areas of Alaska, the costs for many goods can be high, as they must be brought in. Galena burns just under 400,000 gallons of diesel annually to produce electricity, and an energy price hike around 2008 helped the village realize something needed to change. Scotton remembered when a gallon of diesel was $1.64 and then skyrocketed to $4.58 another year. At that wholesale price, the city was paying more than $1.8 million to keep the lights on.

“It was really quite a shock to everybody’s system in terms of trying to operate with those elevated costs,” Scotton said. “So that really got the community assessing whether or not we could continue business as usual with that reliance.”

That’s when they started looking for grants to build a solar array.

On an overcast May day, on a field flanked by boreal forests, workers in reflective safety vests slotted rectangular panels onto a metal grid. They were working on the nearly completed, 1.5-megawatt solar farm that will connect to a battery system.

The community will eventually be able to turn off its diesel engines and run on 100 percent clean, renewable energy on sunny summer days. Any excess power will be stored for nights, emergencies or heating the local indoor pool. The solar array will allow diesel operations to be shut off between 800 to 1,000 hours per year, saving about 100,000 gallons.

The solar farm won’t necessarily lower people’s electricity bills. But like the biomass plant, the hope is that it will stabilize energy costs, allowing those savings to go back into the community, all while providing work opportunities for residents like Aaren Sommer. Last year, the 19-year-old graduated from the academy, where he learned about solar energy. Now he’s helping to install the solar array.

“That’s going to reduce the diesel usage a whole bunch over at the power plant, which is going to help us out,” he said.

Editor’s note: Pineda reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalist Alyssa Goodman in New York contributed to this report.

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