Rebound in global gas demand drifts world from climate goals: IEA

Natural gas is expected to strongly rebound in 2021 from last year’s decline, followed by more moderate increases through 2024, drifting the world from the net-zero emissions 2050 goals, said the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Monday.

“Global gas demand is expected to rise by 3.6 percent in 2021 before easing to an average growth rate of 1.7 percent over the following three years,” said the agency in its Gas Market report.  By 2024, demand will increase up to 7 percent from 2019’s pre-Covid levels.

“But stronger policies need to be implemented to put global gas demand on a path in line with reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 while still fostering economic prosperity. These include measures to ensure gas is used more efficiently. At the same time, the gas industry needs to significantly step up efforts to shift to cleaner and low-carbon gases – and to act quickly and effectively to address needless methane emissions,” said Keisuke Sadamori, the IEA’s Director of Energy Markets and Security in a statement.

The agency said that governments must ensure continuous efforts to reduce the intensity of the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions; develop carbon management solutions to reduce emissions from combustion.

The report said that  conventional assets that were already approved or under development before the pandemic, mainly in Russia and the Middle East can meet this increased demand.

“Supply is also likely to be supplemented by new investment in US shale gas production to support export capacity for liquefied natural gas (LNG) that is currently under development,” said the agency.