 and welcome to the launch of the International Energy Agency's new Energy Efficiency 2023 market report. I'm Jethro Mullen, head of the IEA's communications team, and I'm joined today by IEA Executive Director, Dr. Fati Birol, and by Dr. Brian Motherway, the head of our Energy Efficiency and Inclusive Transitions Office. Energy Efficiency 2023 is the 10th edition of our annual market report on this important topic, and you can read the full report, which is freely available on our website, IEA.org. During today's event, Dr. Birol will make some opening remarks, and then Dr. Motherway will present the key findings of the report. We'll then take questions from journalists. For the journalists taking part in this press webinar, we invite you to send your questions via the Q&A function in the Zoom. You can do this at any point during the presentation, and we'll also take a two-minute break right after the presentation for you to send your questions. With that, I'll hand over to our Executive Director, Dr. Birol. Thank you very much, Jethro, and greetings to all the colleagues, friends, following this event. So dear colleagues, we are going to talk today about energy efficiency, and this year is the 50th anniversary of the climate and energy crisis we have seen 50 years ago as a result of the first oil price shock. And as it happened that time, we are seeing again this year energy efficiency is rising in the agenda of government's industry and others. We have seen the critical importance of energy efficiency in our energy policies. When we look at the benefits of energy efficiency addressing the energy security challenges, and we experienced this in the recent energy crisis, we see the benefits of energy efficiency to bring the cost of energy down for the consumers. And we also know that energy efficiency does play a very important role to address our climate challenges. So energy security, affordability, and climate change, these three areas, energy efficiency policies can make important contributions. It is the reason, since years, I nicknamed energy efficiency as the very first fuel. We have many fuels, the oil, renewables, nuclear power, coal, gas, others. But for me, for the IEA, it is the first fuel is energy efficiency. Because we think we have to start of planning any energy strategy, looking at the potential of energy efficiency improvement in a given country, given economy. When we hit the energy crisis almost two years now, when it started, I mentioned in our previous reports that I said, I hope that this crisis will lead to another jump in the energy efficiency policies, energy efficiency, strategies of the governments. And now, when we look at the results of the report, which we are sharing today with you, which was prepared by my colleague, Mr. Motherway, and his great energy efficiency team, we see that our hopes are realized at a large scale. When I look at the report, some of the findings, it says that the since the global energy crisis started, governments representing more than three quarters of the global economy, more than 75 percent of the global economy, have come up with new energy efficiency policies or make the existing ones stronger. This is very impressive. More than three fourth of the governments give a big push to energy efficiency. Again, I believe, driven by the energy security concerns, driven by the bringing the price of the energy down for the consumers. And also, of course, many governments know that energy efficiency is one of the building blocks of any energy strategy which hopes to reach our climate goals. Our report says that these improvements in the government policies after the crisis are seen in many parts of the economy, but they highlighted two areas, which both of them are very important when you look at the energy consumption. One of them is the industrial motors. The global applications of efficiency standards for the industrial motors have more than tripled within the last few years, which is, of course, very good news because industrial motors is a major source of energy consumption. And now, another area, again an important issue, air conditions, sold around the world, at least some, maybe not very strong, but at least some type of efficiency standards applied. This is something that we have been talking at the IEA, at a different IEA work. In fact, I can remember, I don't know if, Brian, you remember several years ago, we made a study on air conditions, which I called at that time one of the blunt spots of policymaking because at that time we met, many people understood that the air conditions are and set to be a key sector of electricity consumption, especially developing countries. Dear colleagues, we all know, I guess, and I hope we all know, that this year, 2023, is set to be the warmest year in the history. There's many implications, and one of them is there is a growing need for cooling, and this is the reason we have seen in many regions around the world, the sales of air conditions increase by more than 50 percent, a big jump to address the issues, the impacts of climate change in terms of warmer temperature. And we know that in many countries, especially in the developing world, this includes especially Asia and Middle East and some parts of Africa, electricity consumption reached about three-fourth of the peak electricity consumption, which is another important challenge, which once again highlights a very important point we tried to make since years, that the air conditions need to have the best efficiency standards in order to need to build less power plants. So this is another area that our reports look into. Now, we are approaching the COP28, only a few days from now, but my colleague Brian and myself will travel in the next a few days to Dubai in order to hopefully come back to Paris with some good news, with some good conclusions from the COP28. One of the conclusions we would like to get out of the COP28 is that the governments around the world would agree to double the global energy efficiency improvement and havoc is an important global target. A global energy efficiency improves about two percent per year, it was 2022, about two percent. We would like to see that it comes to around four percent to be in line with our climate targets. Based on our net zero report, we prepared at the IEA, which many governments and institutions and the companies are using as a benchmark. So according to that study, we need to see global efficiency to improve four percent per year significantly, if two times higher than the historical average. In fact, last summer, we organized the IEA's Global Energy Efficiency Conference, the eighth annual global energy conference bringing several governments around the table. And in that conference in Paris, in Versailles, almost 50 governments agreed that the set doubling of the energy efficiency improvement is a strategic target for addressing our climate challenges and also, of course, to benefit from it is a energy security and affordability side events. Now, we also say at the IEA that this is, while this is a very important target for us, we would like to also see a gain-based report, net zero report, the tripling of the renewable capacity. So these two, tripling of the renewable capacity, doubling of the energy efficiency that have been suggested by the IEA, are two pillars of a successful outcome from COP28, among others, of course, that IEA has highlighted. I wanted to thank my colleague Brian Motherway and the excellent team of our energy efficiency division here to come up this report to highlight where do we see the progress in terms of energy efficiency, which sectors, which countries, and where do we see still a strong potential to exploit to address our energy and climate challenges. With this, I would like to turn to my colleague, Mr. Motherway, to take us through some of the key findings of this great report. Over to you, Brian. Thank you very much, Dr. Baral, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be with you today, talking about the 10th edition of the Energy Efficiency Market Report, the 2023 edition. And as Dr. Baral started by saying, we did see in 2022 some interesting developments. We started by saying we do think there is some signs of what we call a turning point to that point, where we see a sense that we are seeing a change in government's focus on energy efficiency driven by the energy crisis, driven by an understanding that we need more from energy efficiency in terms of its ability to bring energy costs down, to enhance our energy security, but also, of course, to reduce our emissions. And we did say, will 2022 be start of a turning point in energy efficiency because of the many strength and policies we saw at that time? And of course, 2023 has been characterized, as Dr. Baral said, by the hot being the hottest year ever. In many regions, we saw temperatures exceed 50 degrees Celsius in many parts of the world, many extreme weather events causing hardship for many people in the world and people responding by buying more air conditioning and fans and other solutions. And of course, by using those devices, putting a lot of pressure on electricity systems around the world. We've been tracking this very closely and we see very direct relationships between the weather and the responses in relation to electricity demand. For example, in Texas, every increase in temperature by one degree sees a 4% increase in electricity use. In India, that's 2% because not as many people own air conditioners, but that's increasing year on year as you can see and that's only going to continue to increase. And as Dr. Baral said, on a very hot day in a hot region, air conditioning can represent up to 75% of the total peak electricity demand. And in fact, this year in 10 of the largest electricity systems in the world, they experienced the highest ever on record electricity peak demand they have ever seen. And of course, the need for more and more air conditioning with a big driver of that. So we see this very strong pressure driven by the extreme weather events as a key characteristic of 2023, among others. Has there been a policy response to that? Yes, there has. So now today, most air conditioners that are purchased are subject to at least some form of energy efficiency standard, which is certainly progress. It's also important to note that many of the recent policy developments have been in the hardest regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Many other areas have seen important policy developments such as industrial motors, cars and many others where we've seen in the last couple of years many new policies being introduced and that is certainly very welcome developments. And of course, we see this playing out then in terms of energy demand. We see particularly highly efficient electrified technologies like heat pumps and electric vehicles because of the record breaking sales are really starting to have an impact on energy demand in the relevant sectors in many countries where we're starting to see peaks in residential gas demand in many countries, for example, or in gasoline demand. And this is only going to continue. And the most recent World Energy Outlook showed that in all scenarios we expect global peaks in all fossil fuels at the latest before the end of this decade. Now, of course, this depends on regions. The story is different in many regions. And this is very much a story that pertains to energy efficiency where we see different dynamics playing out between growth factors, structural changes and the positive impacts of energy efficiency policies. Let me give you an example of this. If you take, for example, the United Kingdom in the last decade, even as population grows and the housing stock grows, energy efficiency policies have had a very positive impact and the total residential energy demand of the total housing stock has, in fact, fallen by about 10%. If you contrast that to an economy like Brazil where structural changes and changes in the way people are living, particularly moving away from multifamily dwellings, means that those changes have actually cancelled out the energy efficiency gains and the sector as a whole is using more energy. Now, it's very important to note that in the housing sector, a typical house in the United Kingdom, energy use per capita is four times higher than in Brazil. So I'm talking about the different dynamics that are in play in terms of socioeconomic development into locking with energy efficiency effects and the need, therefore, for energy efficiency policies to work even harder if we're going to see the gains accrue globally and make those important energy efficiency progress around the world that we need to see. So these are the effects that are playing together when we see the overall effect that last year we saw a global improvement of 2% in energy intensity this year that's not going to be as high because we see these different structural effects playing in different parts of the world. There are a lot of regional effects going on here in some regions. In fact, they will make intensity gains are a lot higher than 2%. In other cases, they are offset by structural change. There are also very important time lag effects going on here where many of the new policies that have been introduced recently are not washing through into intensity gains quite yet, but we expect that to follow quite soon. And there are also different dynamics then in terms of these regional dynamics, these time dynamics playing. So we're expecting a lot of improvements to flow quite quickly, but unfortunately we're not seeing them yet. And these all speak to what Dr. Baral mentioned about the importance of the 2030 goal of doubling the rate of improvement between now starting from 2022 to the end of this decade, which is seen in the IEA's net zero pathway as both necessary and indeed achievable if we're to be on target for our climate goals. If we deliver this doubling efficiency target, it's a critical step for the net zero pathway. It will deliver one of the biggest chunks of emissions savings between now and 2030. It will reduce energy bills. It will create literally millions of energy efficiency jobs. And we do know it is a stretch target, but we also know that it actually can be done because when we track countries energy performance in recent years, we know that across countries right around the world, the vast majority of countries have hit that 4% target rate at least once in the last decade. And half of all countries have in fact delivered that rate at least three times in the last decade. And in fact, driven by the new policies we've seen introduced in the last two years, more than 40 countries in the world have hit that doubling rate of 4% either in 2022 or in 2023 or indeed in both of those years. So we know the target can be achieved. What we're really not seeing yet is a sense of consistency where countries are delivering that higher rate of efficiency gain year on year consistently, beating back those dynamic forces in relation to structural change and economic growth, but making sure that the efficiency policies are strong enough to deliver the gains that we need to see. Now those gains are coming because in fact the technologies we need to double our efficiency progress already exist. In all markets, the typically available best-in-class product already meets the standards we need to deliver a doubling of efficiency by the end of this decade. And policy foundations are already in place where policy standards are already meeting the level of doubling or moving quite close to it or on a trajectory closer to it, such as you see here with car efficiency standards where the car efficiency standards have already mapped out through announcements or further developments already mapped out through policies around the world a path towards the efficiency gains we need to see by 2030. So we know that the technologies are on the map and the policies are on the map to deliver the policy gains. And in fact, if you look around at best policy practices right around the world, if you take some of the best policies we look at today, I've chosen some examples on the slide here today but in fact I could have chosen others, but if we take some of the best policies that exist around the world today and ask all countries to apply these best policies, apply them well, implement them well as part of policy packages, we could in fact deliver that doubling standard straight away. These policy examples are exactly what we discussed at IEA's annual global conference and Dr. Baral mentioned the most recent conference at Versailles where 46 governments signed up to the working together towards the doubling target by the end of the decade. I'm pleased to say that the government of Kenya has agreed to host next year's annual conference from the 21st to the 23rd of May 2024 in the city of Nairobi. We're looking forward to being hosted by the Minister and the President of Kenya in 2024 and we hope you will join us there for the ninth annual global conference on energy efficiency. And finally in closing, I do want to note as Jethro said at the start, this is the 10th edition of the energy efficiency market report so I want to say first of all thank you to you Dr. Baral for your support for the energy efficiency agenda over the last decade as we have seen it rise in importance and seen the work of the agency hopefully contribute to that around the world and I want to thank my team and all of the agency working on energy efficiency and all of our friends and colleagues around the world working on energy efficiency as we see it grow to an importance and profile that it really hasn't had for a very long time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the presentation. So we now have some time to take some questions from journalists. We invite the journalists in attendance to send your questions through the Q&A function in the Zoom if you haven't done so already and please mention your media outlet along with your question. We'll take a two-minute break to give you a chance to enter your questions and we'll be right back. Hi, welcome back. So thank you very much for the questions we've got so far. We're going to get through as many of them as we can. The first one comes from Rhys Talbot from Argus Media asking or noting that the greatest falls in energy intensity in recent years have come in Europe where consumption in energy intensive industries has fallen sharply because of high energy prices. Does this bode poorly for the prospects of global falls in energy intensity rather than simply shifts in energy intensive industrial processes to different geographies? And then there's also a question from Nicholas Kermayer. Given the bounce back we're seeing in energy efficiency was 2022 just a blip on the radar and is the doubling out of reach? And do you feel that energy crisis has raised countries' awareness of energy efficiency and prompted long-term measures? I think I'll put those two questions to Dr. Brian Motherway, the head of energy efficiency and inclusive transitions. Brian? I mean thank you for those questions and they're clearly related and I certainly see that the dynamic is a mixture of positive and negative but on balance certainly positive because the level of policy action on energy efficiency in the since the crisis started in early 2022 is unprecedented. The level of investment, the level of new policies put in place is really impressive and really strong and certainly Europe has been in one case where there's been really strong focus, really strategic focus of the highest level of policy making on putting new policies in place, on countries working together, new action taking place and that's been a major driver for the very impressive gains Europe has made in the last two years where it has hit in fact it has hit the doubling target both in 2022 and in 2023 as a region as a whole. Now of course there has been pain and that's been driven by the higher prices and there has been you know some suffering in industry and in households but there's also been some very impressive energy efficiency gains and that's why I feel that I don't think 2022 is a blip. I think we always see this dynamic between the progress that energy efficiency makes and then the various factors related to structural growth and some rebound effects in certain parts of the global economy but I think on balance we're starting to see those energy efficiency policies move into place, we'll start to see their effects really kick in in the next year or two and I think we're on an upper trajectory. Thank you very much Brian and then we do have questions about the the doubling goal at COP28 in Dubai and so Catherine and Catherine ours from Agence France-Pless asks what do you expect concretely from a commitment in Dubai is it is it first a question of raising awareness how to make sure it is consistent and applied everywhere in the world and then more broadly there's a question saying you have called for a global agreement on both tripling renewable power capacity and doubling energy efficiency improvements by 2030 and based on your discussions with governments around the world do you think COP28 will be able to deliver a commitment on both of these things so I think those questions I'll pass to our executive director Dr. Beryl and also just to note that the earlier question on the blip whether 2022 was a blip came from Nicholas Kermayer who's obviously from your active but now these latest questions to Dr. Beryl. Thank you very much Jethro you are very precise so thank you very much for that so it is a very good question I did these two questions doubling and tripling we have called for a tripling of the renewable capacity to 2030 and a doubling of energy efficiency improvement and what I see now talking with the different governments around the world in Asia in Europe in Latin America Africa in North America our discussions give us a hope that the governments in Dubai may come up with the tripling of the renewable capacity and doubling of the energy efficiency is two important targets two important pledges these two are extremely important to reach our climate targets and of course they are going to give a signal to the markets to the different stakeholders to the investors utilities energy industry it is it will be very important to get this to in as a result of COP28 but in order to say that the COP28 provided the the success that we as the international energy agency would like to see we have three other important conditions if I may say so coming from COP28 in addition to renewables and energy efficiency targets the the third one would be that the governments agree on taking measures for an orderly decline of fossil fuel use starting with coal this would be extremely important because we on one hand want to see clean energy to grow but at the same time we want to see the fossil fuel consumption to decline so therefore giving such an important signal will be extremely important and critical for a successful COP28 thought we would like to see that the the governments agree together with the international financial institutions to give us support to create mechanisms financial mechanisms to for the investment in clean energy sectors for developing and emerging countries when we look at the investment trends we see that the clean energy investments are growing but the big chunk of this growth is taking place in advanced economies and in china so we need to give a boost to developing and emerging countries financing for clean energy applications and the fifth and last one we very much hope to see that the oil and gas companies the meeting is taking place in Middle East a major oil and gas producing region the oil and gas companies from that region but across the world make commitments to align their strategies with Paris targets many of them say in the public speeches the liberations this is very good but we would like to see them committing themselves for a few areas ranging from a reducing their scope and scope to emissions by about 60 percent by 2030 compared to today including a big decline in methane emissions if not nullifying them and at the same time their contribution to clean energy investments which is today about one percent the share of oil and gas in total clean energy investments around the world they make commitments to increase those contributions so these are the five criteria for the international energy agency to consider COP28 to be a successful one and we are going to do anything we can to discuss with the government's other stakeholders to come out with this five output five results from COP28 in Dubai thank you thank you very much Dr. Birrell so that brings the Q&A session to a close if any journalists have further questions about the report we invite you to reach out to our press office press at IEA.org and we'll get back to you as soon as we can so yeah thank you very much to Dr. Birrell to Dr. Motherway thank you to the journalists for your questions and thank you to everyone following this event if you're interested in our work and this important topic of energy efficiency going into COP28 the full energy efficiency 2023 report is available for free on our website IEA.org and there are a lot of useful insights in there so please take a look that's all for today thank you and goodbye