Energy efficiency is expected to record this year its weakest progress in a decade, creating additional challenges to the world achieving international climate goals, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new report on Thursday. Plunging investments and the economic crisis have markedly slowed the progress in energy efficiency this year, to half the rate of improvement seen in the previous two years, the IEA said in its Energy Efficiency 2020 report. Global primary energy intensity, a key indicator of how efficiently the world’s economic activity uses energy, is expected to improve by less than 1 percent in 2020, the weakest rate since 2010, according to the report. That rate is well below the one needed to successfully address climate change and reduce air pollution, the IEA said. According to the agency’s projections, energy efficiency is expected to deliver more than 40 percent of the reduction in energy-related […]

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