Global Energy Demand Set To Jump 60% By 2060 As Developing Nations Power Up

By Haley Zarmba of OilPrice.com

Emerging economies are going to see an explosion of energy demand over the coming decades. Countries like Brazil, India, Nigeria, and Indonesia are racing to expand their energy production and imports in order to keep up with rapid economic development. While the leaders of these and other emerging economies are making a concerted effort to expand their renewable energy capacity, meeting demand will require an all-of-the-above approach to energy that will extend the life of oil and gas, according to a new report from S&P Global.

According to the study, published last week, emerging economies could increase the world’s total energy demand by more than 60 percent by 2060. “That’s comparable to adding another China to world consumption,” a recent Marketplace report illustrates.

Speaking of China, the global superpower has become, by a gaping margin, the world’s biggest manufacturer of the clean energy infrastructure that is going to power a lot of that growth. Many of the world’s developing countries have seen their solar power installations skyrocket in recent months thanks to a flood of cheap clean energy tech coming out of China, paired with volatility in oil and gas markets driven by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Against this backdrop, emerging economies have emerged as the new face of the renewable revolution. Over the last several years, countries including Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Morocco, Kenya, and Namibia have overtaken the world’s largest economy in their clean energy transitions. As of the close of 2025, 63 percent of emerging markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America sourced more of their power generation from solar power than the United States.

But while a renewable revolution is picking up speed in the Global South, S&P says not to expect a clean energy takeover. “This demand growth is going to be met with a multiplicity of different energies,” said Dan Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global. “Renewables will be an important part of it. You’re going to see perhaps more coal now … and oil and gas will continue to be part of the demand picture for longer than many people think.”

While this reality is going to make climate goals incredibly hard to achieve, emerging economies have pushed back against the expectation that they “leapfrog” over fossil fuel development and straight into a 100 percent renewable grid to make up for the greenhouse gas emissions that developed nations had the opportunity to enrich themselves on carte blanche. Rich nations have promised to right this injustice by funding decarbonization in poorer countries, but the history of climate finance is riddled with broken promises.

While Chinese manufacturing has made renewables much cheaper and more attainable, that still requires massive investments on the part of countries that don’t already have a well-established clean energy sector. “Emerging economies can’t wait on renewables getting cheaper to grow their energy systems,” Marketplace writes based on an interview with deputy executive director at the Energy for Growth Hub, Katie Auth said.

Furthermore, despite the growing threat of climate change, energy demand growth is a net positive for developing nations, Auth points out. “It’s being driven by economic development, rising incomes, job creation,” she said. “Right now, the average Liberian consumes less electricity in a year than my refrigerator does. So the scale of energy poverty is far worse than I imagine most Americans would ever think about,” Katie Auth, deputy executive director at the Energy for Growth Hub, told Marketplace. This argument is only made more powerful by the recent explosion in energy demand and carbon footprint in the developed world driven by artificial intelligence.