Oil prices will stay below US$80 per barrel for the next five years, the International Energy Agency predicted Tuesday in its annual World Energy Outlook.
The Paris-based agency also reported that renewable energy accounted for nearly half of the world’s new power generation in 2014 and is now the second-largest energy source, after coal.
The report “warned members not to become complacent about low-cost oil from a handful of producers as that could be a threat to energy security,” the Associated Press reports. “And it urged countries to move more quickly towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol stressed that the energy sector “must be at the heart of global action to tackle climate change,” adding that world leaders participating in the U.N. climate summit in Paris “must set a clear direction for the accelerated transformation of the global energy sector.”
To meet the current international target of limiting average global warming to 2ºC (3.6ºF) above pre-industrial levels, the IEA says renewable energy investment will have to increase from US$270 billion in 2014 to US$400 billion by 2030.
