Business

IEA heralds ‘the Age of Electricity’ while warning that oil may not be peaking in 2030 after all

Published

1 month ago

November 12, 2025

The world is rapidly approaching a crucial turning point in its energy consumption, with global demand for key fossil fuels, particularly oil and coal, expected to reach a peak around 2030, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) flagship publication, the World Energy Outlook 2025. This pivotal moment is outlined in the IEA’s more transition-friendly “Stated Policies Scenario” (STEPS), which tracks energy trends based on government policies already adopted or put forward, even if not yet fully enacted into law.

That being said, the IEA brought back what it calls a “Current Policies Scenario,” with a vastly different outcome. The so-called CPS, on hiatus for 5 years, projects that fossil-fuel consumption will rise by 13% by 2050. This hinges on a slower pace of electric vehicle adoption and assumes that countries will not keep their promises to curb fossil fuel consumption. Last year, the IEA projected oil demand would either plateau or decline in the 2020s across its scenarios. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told both Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal that the CPS needed to come back because of the many uncertainties in the current policy climate, including the U.S. embrace of oil, gas, and coal under President Trump. “The main reason we have two new scenarios is the growing uncertainties in the political, economy and energy context.”

Three interlocking trends propel the decline in fossil fuels seen in STEPS. First, the IEA sees rapid advances in clean technologies, projecting that renewables, particularly solar and wind, will nearly triple their electricity generation capacity by 2035. EV sales and heat pumps continue to surge globally, led by China and other major economies. Second comes efficiency gains. Stricter standards and smarter technologies mean the world will do more with less energy, flattening overall demand growth despite a rising global population and economy. Finally, structural changes, particularly in China—the world’s former engine of fossil fuel growth—are shifting to a less energy-intensive model focused on services and high-tech manufacturing.

Add it all up, the intergovernmental organization says, and global oil demand should peak around 102 million barrels per day by 2030, then begin a slow decline, eventually returning to 2024 levels by 2035. And the peak of coal is coming sooner than that, according to STEPS.

Rationale

The imminent peak in oil consumption is driven primarily by the accelerating electrification of road transport. In STEPS, the share of EV sales globally is projected to rise dramatically, moving from more than 20% today to exceed 50% by 2035. This massive uptake of EVs is forecast to displace 10 million barrels per day of oil demand by 2035, primarily in major markets such as Asia and Europe. While the IEA sees passenger-car oil use declining significantly, the overall reduction is somewhat offset by continued increases in demand for petrochemical feedstock and aviation fuels, where electrification remains challenging.

Meanwhile, demand for coal is set to peak even earlier, declining globally before 2030 in STEPS. “Coal-fired power is approaching a turning point after decades of growth,” according to the IEA, “with global trends increasingly shaped by developments in Asia.” About half of global coal demand is for electricity generation in China, India, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian countries, the IEA says, and China is rapidly scaling up renewables and nuclear power. While India is similar, Southeast Asia is projected to continue burning coal steadily, but the IEA sees global coal demand dropping roughly 20% by 2035.

While oil and coal are poised for near-term peaks, the outlook for natural gas is different. Natural gas demand in STEPS continues to increase by nearly 1% annually to 2035 before eventually leveling off. This sustained growth is buttressed by an abundant supply resulting from a major expansion in liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity—an unprecedented 300 billion cubic meters of new capacity is scheduled to begin operation by 2030, representing a 50% increase in global available LNG supply. Half of this capacity increase is being built in the U.S., with Qatar following behind with a 20% increase in supply.

The ‘age of electricity’

Underpinning these shifts is the accelerating movement into what the IEA calls the “Age of Electricity,” including the AI-driven data center boom worldwide. In STEPS, electricity demand is projected to increase four times faster than overall energy demand through 2035, but the shift is more profound, the organization argues.

“Electricity is at the heart of modern economies,” the IEA says, noting that electricity demand grows much faster than overall energy use in every one of its forward-looking scenarios. Investors are reacting to this trend, with spending on electricity supply and end-use electrification already accounting for half of today’s global energy investment. Renewables, led by solar and wind, are forecast to meet the majority of this surging demand, with their share in global electricity generation rising from one-third today to over half by 2035.

Despite the projected peak in fossil fuel demand around 2030, the IEA warns that current government policies remain insufficient to meet global climate goals. In STEPS, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, which hit a record 38 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2024, are only projected to decline modestly to 35 Gt by the mid-2030s. This trajectory points towards a median, long-term global average temperature rise of around 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. By contrast, the IEA’s CPS—which excludes policies not yet formalized in law—projects that oil and natural gas demand will continue to grow through 2050.

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Business

The Epstein files are heavily redacted, including contact info for Trump, celebs, and bankers

Published

16 minutes ago

December 19, 2025

Jace Porter

The highly anticipated Epstein files have so far landed with a thud as page after page of documents have been blacked out, with many nearly totally redacted.

While hundreds of thousands of documents have been released so far on the Justice Department’s site housing the information, there isn’t that much to see.

“Simply releasing a mountain of blacked out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. “For example, all 119 pages of one document were completely blacked out. We need answers as to why.”

That appeared to refer to a document titled “Grand Jury NY.”

The data dump came late Friday, the deadline that Congress established last month for disclosing the trove of files, though other documents had already been released earlier by the DOJ, Congress and the Epstein estate.

One document listed thousands of names with their contact information redacted, including Donald Trump as well as Ivana and Ivanka Trump.

Numerous celebrities were also in that document, such as Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger and the late pop idol Michael Jackson, who also appeared in photos with Epstein.

Former Senators John Kerry and George Mitchell were on the list as were Jes Staley, a former JPMorgan and Barclays executive, and Leon Black, a cofounder and former CEO of Apollo Global Management.

Appearing in the files doesn’t necessarily imply any wrongdoing as Epstein mingled in wider social circles and was ofter asked for charitable donations.

But Staley said he had sex with a member of Epstein’s staff, and Black was pushed out of Apollo over his Epstein ties, which Black maintains were for tax- and estate-planning services.

Numerous hotels, clubs and restaurants are listed too, plus locations simply described as “massage.” Banks included the now defunct Colonial Bank as well as Bear Stearns and Chemical Bank, which both eventually became part of JPMorgan.

Other entries fell under country categories like Brazil, France, Italy and Israel. Former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak were on the list.

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Business

Epstein files: Trump, Clinton, Summers, Gates not returning any results in search bar

Published

2 hours ago

December 19, 2025

Jace Porter

The Justice Department released a massive trove of files related to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, but the site housing the information was failing to turn up any results.

The data dump came on the deadline that Congress established last month for disclosing the highly anticipated information, though a top Justice official suggested that not all the documents would come out at once with more due in the coming weeks.

While President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and scores of other powerful men have been linked to Epstein, their names failed to come up in a search of DOJ’s “Epstein Library.”

“No results found. Please try a different search,” the site says after queries for their names.

The site adds that “Due to technical limitations and the format of certain materials (e.g., handwritten text), portions of these documents may not be electronically searchable or may produce unreliable search results.”

However, Clinton also appears in photos that were released as does the late pop singer Michael Jackson. Other records were heavily redacted.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that the Justice Department had identified 1,200 victims of Epstein or their relatives and redacted materials that could reveal their identities, according to the New York Times.

Last month, an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in Congress produced legislation to force the Trump administration to release the DOJ files, though emails and photos from Epstein’s estate had already come out.

One of the sponsors of that legislation, Rep. Ro Khanna, warned on Friday that if DOJ doesn’t show that it’s complying with the law, Congress could hold impeachment hearings for Attorney General Pam Bondi and Blanche.

Earlier on Friday, Blanche told Fox News that “several hundred thousand” pages would be released on Friday. “And then, over the next couple of weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more,” he added.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Business

Want a job in AI-era tech? Forget prestigious degrees—tech leaders want to see your GitHub projects and internships

Published

3 hours ago

December 19, 2025

Jace Porter

For decades, computer science has been sold as one of the surest paths to economic security. And leaders across politics and industry—from former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates—have at times urged students not to overlook the field, framing coding skills as the secret to stable, high-paying jobs.

But as artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes the workplace, that promise is starting to look less certain.

A new survey of more than 200 engineering leaders, conducted by tech training nonprofit CodePath and shared exclusively with Fortune, shows entry-level tech hiring is slowing. More than one-third of respondents, 38%, said their company has reduced the number of entry-level hiring over the past year, and nearly 1 in 7 reported pausing Gen Z hiring altogether.

At the same time, 18% said hiring had stayed the same, and 8% reported an increase. Despite the overall slowdown, CodePath CEO Michael Ellison—a Y Combinator alum—argues telling people to avoid tech right now would be a mistake.

“That’s just kind of like taking crazy pills if you end up choosing not to invest in the tools that make you the most powerful—of telling computers what you want them to do in an age where computers are becoming exponentially more powerful,” Ellison told Fortune. “So to me, it’s like saying, ‘don’t learn how to use the internet.’”

Ellison’s argument reflects a broader shift in how computer science fits into the AI economy. As generative AI tools become more capable, understanding how software works—and how to direct, customize, and integrate AI systems—is increasingly seen as a foundational skill rather than a specialized one.

That demand is already showing up in the labor market. AI literacy topped LinkedIn’s list of the skills professionals are prioritizing and companies are hiring for right now. And a Lightcast analysis of more than 1.3 billion job postings in 2024 found roles advertising at least one AI or generative AI skill offered an average of $18,000 more in annual compensation that those that did not.

Notably, the majority of those roles were outside the tech sector. Some 51% of jobs requiring AI skills were in non-tech industries, up from 44% in 2022—a sign coding and AI fluency are becoming relevant far beyond Silicon Valley.

The new secret to landing a tech job

Still, slowing hiring doesn’t mean aspiring technologists should give up. Instead, the CodePath data suggests candidates may need to rethink what they emphasize—and what they leave off—when applying for tech roles.

When asked which signals matter most outside the interview process, engineering leaders indicated proof of real-world skills matter far more than formal credentials. Side projects or portfolios topped the list, cited by 38% of respondents, followed by internship experience (35%), and public code portfolios like GitHub (34%).

Traditional markers of achievement, by contrast, carried far less weight. Just 4% of leaders said credentialing programs were a top influence in hiring decisions, while only 23% cited a candidate degree or academic focus and 17% pointed to school prestige.

The shift away from pedigree suggests employers are seeking evidence candidates can actually do the work. Greater fluency with AI tools and frameworks was the most common skill expectation for early-career hires, followed by faster time to writing production-ready code and the ability to learn new tools or programming languages quickly.

And despite buzz about tech layoffs, job opportunities do still exist. The U.S. federal government, for example, recently announced it would be hiring about 1,000 new engineers, data scientists, and AI specialists. No degrees or work experience is required—and salaries will range from $150,000 to $200,000. Meta has also still been hiring young talent in recent weeks, with job postings for roles such as product software engineers.

Ellison’s advice for those seeking roles is simple: Opportunities are out there as long as you are willing to dig in deeper—and build a portfolio that hiring managers are looking for.

“People are rewarded for being aggressive and for going after what they want,” he said. It’s surprising the opportunities that are hidden in plain sight.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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