After experiencing its biggest decline in decades, global electricity demand is expected to rebound modestly in 2021, led by growth in China, India and other emerging economies, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency.
The historic shock of the Covid-19 crisis is set to result in a 2% decline in global electricity demand in 2020, according to the IEA’s first ever Electricity Market Report, which was published recently. With the recovery of the world economy in 2021, electricity demand is forecast to grow by around 3%.
That would be significantly weaker than the rebound in demand of over 7% in 2010, the year following the global financial crisis. China will be the only major economy to see higher electricity demand in 2020. However, its expected growth of around 2% is well below its recent average of 6.5%. Other big electricity consumers including the United States, India, Europe, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia are all set to experience declines for the year as a whole.