IEA: Renewables have cut fossil-fuel imports for more than 100 countries

<p>More than 100 countries have cut their dependence on fossil-fuel imports and saved hundreds of billions of dollars by continuing to invest in renewables, according to the <a href="https://www.iea.org/">International Energy Agency</a> (IEA).</p>

<p>It <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2025">says</a> nations such as the UK, Germany and Chile have reduced their need for imported coal and gas by around a third since 2010, mainly by building wind and solar power.</p>

<p>Denmark has cut its reliance on fossil-fuel imports by nearly half over the same period.</p>

<p>Renewable expansion allowed these nations to collectively avoid importing 700m tonnes of coal and 400bn cubic metres of gas in 2023, equivalent to around 10% of global consumption.</p>

<p>In doing so, the fuel-importing countries saved more than $1.3tn between 2010 and 2023 that would otherwise have been spent on fossil fuels from overseas.</p>

<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Reduced reliance</h2>

<p>The IEA’s <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2025">Renewables 2025</a> report quantifies the benefits of renewable-energy deployment for electricity systems in fossil fuel-importing nations.&nbsp;</p>

<p>It compares recent trends in renewable expansion to an alternative “low renewable-energy source” scenario, in which this growth did not take place.</p>

<p>In this counterfactual, fuel-importing countries stopped building wind, solar and other non-hydropower renewable-energy projects after 2010.</p>

<p>In reality, the world added around 2,500 gigawatts (GW) of such projects between 2010 and 2023, according to the IEA, more than the combined electricity <a href="https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world/electricity/electricity-capacity?pd=2&amp;p=0000000000000000000007vo7&amp;u=0&amp;f=A&amp;v=mapbubble&amp;a=-&amp;i=none&amp;vo=value&amp;t=G&amp;g=none&amp;l=249-00000002000g00048000184000000000000000000000000201&amp;l=71--71&amp;s=315532800000&amp;e=1672531200000">generating capacity</a> of the EU and US in 2023, from all sources. Roughly 80% of this new renewable capacity was built in nations that rely on coal and gas imports to generate electricity.</p>

<p>The chart below shows how 31 of these countries have substantially cut their dependence on imported fossil fuels over the 13-year period, as a result of expanding their wind, solar and other renewable energy supplies. All of these countries are net importers of coal and gas.</p>

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="Chart showing that many countries have significantly cut their reliance on fossil-fuel imports by building renewables" class="wp-image-59492" height="8699" src="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Fossil_fuel_imports-2.jpg" width="7409" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Share of national electricity supplies that depend on imported fossil fuels in 2023, actual (left) and in the IEA’s “low renewable-energy source” scenario (right), in 31 countries that are net importers of coal and gas. Source: <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2025">IEA</a>.</figcaption></figure>

<p>In total, the IEA identified 107 countries that had reduced their dependence on fossil fuel imports for electricity generation, to some extent due to the deployment of renewables other than hydropower.</p>

<p>Of these, 38 had cut their reliance on electricity from imported coal and gas by more than 10 percentage points and eight had seen that share drop by more than 30 percentage points.</p>

<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Security and resilience</h2>

<p>The IEA stresses that renewables “inherently strengthen energy supply security”, because they generate electricity domestically, while also “improving…economic resilience” in fossil-fuel importer countries.&nbsp;</p>

<p>This is particularly true for countries with low or <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-north-sea-gas-is-not-four-times-cleaner-than-lng-imports/">dwindling</a> domestic energy resources.</p>

<p>The agency cites the <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-does-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-mean-for-energy-and-climate-change/">energy crisis</a> exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which exposed EU importers to spiralling fossil-fuel prices.</p>

<p>Bulgaria, Romania and Finland – which have historically depended on Russian gas for electricity generation – have all brought their import reliance close to zero in recent years by building renewables.</p>

<p>In the UK, where there has been mounting <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-reform-led-councils-threaten-6gw-of-solar-and-battery-schemes-across-england/">opposition</a> to renewables from right-wing political parties, the IEA says reliance on electricity generated with imported fossil fuels has dropped from 45% to under 25% in a decade, thanks primarily to the growth of wind and solar power.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Without these technologies, the <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-great-britain-has-run-on-100-clean-power-for-record-87-hours-in-2025-so-far/">UK</a> would now be needing to import fossil fuels to supply nearly 60% of its electricity, the IEA says.</p>

<p>Other major economies, notably <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-record-solar-growth-keeps-chinas-co2-falling-in-first-half-of-2025/">China</a> and the EU, would also have had to rely on a growing share of coal and gas from overseas, if they had not expanded renewables.</p>

<p>As well as increasing the need for fossil-fuel imports from other countries, switching renewables for fossil fuels would require significantly higher energy usage “due to [fossil fuels’] lower conversion efficiencies”, the IEA notes. Each gigawatt-hour (GWh) of renewable power produced has avoided the need for 2-3GWh of fossil fuels, it explains.</p>

<p>Finally, the IEA points out that spending on renewables rather than imported fossil fuels keeps more investment in domestic economies and supports local jobs.</p>

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<p>The post <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/iea-renewables-have-cut-fossil-fuel-imports-for-more-than-100-countries/">IEA: Renewables have cut fossil-fuel imports for more than 100 countries</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org">Carbon Brief</a>.</p>