As clean electric technologies become cheaper, more efficient, and faster to deploy, they are reshaping the economics of energy. Electrification is no longer primarily motivated by climate and emissions reduction goals — it is increasingly driven by economics that will only continue to improve.
What does this mean for the energy transition, and how will it impact fossil fuel demand in the evolving global economy? This report answers those questions by looking to international trends, outlining why electricity technologies will keep getting more competitive, how geography and politics will shape an uneven transition, and other key insights for understanding this global shift.
This brief was developed in partnership with Institut de l’énergie Trottier (IET) for the Global Energy Outlook Forum, a gathering of international energy leaders diving into the most pressing issues facing Canada in the global energy transition.
Key Insights
- Just 38% of the world’s primary energy ends up as useful energy. The rest is lost, mostly as waste heat from burning fossil fuels. Electric technologies deliver the same output with far less input.
- In 2025, clean energy sources covered the entire increase in global electricity demand, allowing fossil-fired generation to decline outside of a recession for the first time in over a decade.
- Five reinforcing technologies power this shift: power electronics, solar PV, batteries, embedded computing, and electric motors.
- Electricity-based systems are getting cheaper every year relative to fossil alternatives, and the higher cost of low-carbon materials is often a small fraction of final consumer product prices.
- Cheap electricity is becoming a competitive advantage for industry, giving sunbelt countries a real opportunity to attract clean manufacturing.
- China dominates clean-tech manufacturing and critical mineral processing today, but unlike fossil fuel dependence, clean-tech materials are recyclable and embedded in long-lived assets, not continuously consumed.
