LONDON, September 12. /TASS/. The demand for main types of fossil fuel will start declining this decade amid the spectacular growth of clean energy technologies and electric vehicles, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol said.

"Peak fossil fuel demand will happen this decade," he stated in a column in Financial Times in the run-up to the publication of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook annual report next month. A peak in demand for oil, gas and coal will be passed "earlier than many people anticipated," the IEA's chief noted.

"According to new projections from the International Energy Agency, this age of seemingly relentless growth is set to come to an end this decade, bringing with it significant implications for the global energy sector and the fight against climate change," Birol said. "The ‘Golden Age of Gas’, which we called in 2011, is nearing an end, with demand in advanced economies set to fall away later this decade. This is the result of renewables increasingly outmatching gas for producing electricity, the rise of heat pumps and Europe’s accelerated shift away from gas," he stressed.

"The remarkable shifts will bring forward the peak in global greenhouse gas emissions. They are primarily driven by the spectacular growth of clean energy technologies such as solar panels and electric vehicles, the structural shifts in China’s economy and the ramifications of the global energy crisis," the IEA’s chief pointed out.

That said, there can still be spikes, dips and plateaus on the way down, he noted, adding that heatwaves and droughts can cause temporary jumps in coal demand by pushing up electricity use while choking hydropower output.