Pressing concerns over the impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities are driving governments and industry to re‑evaluate their roles and responsibilities and in particular what can be done to effect change. With energy-related activities responsible for more than two-thirds of GHG emissions (IEA, 2023a) it is necessary that the energy system looks to decarbonise in a timely, efficient and economic manner while still ensuring energy security and affordability. This was reinforced by the international treaty on climate change adopted in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015 at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21). This agreement saw most countries of the world setting ambitions and implementing new policies to decarbonise the energy system, and these have been reaffirmed or strengthened at subsequent COP meetings.
With that backdrop, all deep decarbonisation scenarios see electrification1 of final uses playing a core role as evidenced by that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (IPCC, 2018, 2021) and other major international institutions (IEA, 2022a; IEA, 2021a; IRENA, 2023). In 2022, the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership (GSEP) published its first edition of the Global Electrification Monitor (GEM) (GSEP, 2022), presenting and analysing the global electrification trends at a global level and in 15 countries: Brazil, Canada, Chile, the People’s Republic of China (hereafter, “China”), Colombia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, the Russian Federation (hereafter, “Russia”), Spain and the United States.