Narrative

Administrator’s Foreword

The report you are reading represents the highest standards of analytical rigor anywhere in the world and was produced by one of the hardest working, most dedicated teams in the federal government: the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). More ›

Introduction

The Annual Energy Outlook 2026 (AEO2026) explores medium- and long-term alternative futures in the United States. AEO2026 is published in accordance with statutory provisions requiring the Administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) to prepare an annual report on energy consumption and supply. These projections are used by federal, state, and local governments; industry; trade associations; and other planners and decisionmakers in the public and private sectors. More ›

Transportation

Use of energy by the transportation sector decreases over the projection in all cases, from 27 quads in 2025 to 21 quads to 25 quads in 2050, despite increasing travel demand as newer, more efficient powertrains make up a larger portion of on-road vehicles. The decrease is most significant in cases where the 2024 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Model Year 2027–2032 tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions standards are enforced, requiring significant fuel efficiency improvements and increased adoption of zero-emission powertrains for both light-duty vehicles and freight trucks. In these cases, use of energy by the transportation sector falls by 13%–25% between 2025 and 2050. In cases where these standards are not enforced, consumption falls by around 9% over the same period. More ›

Electricity

After 15 years of nearly flat U.S. electricity consumption, demand has increased by 2.1% per year, on average, over the last five years. We project electricity consumption will continue growing through 2050 at a rate of 0.9% to 1.6%, with data center server energy use a major factor. Energy use in commercial buildings, home to data center activity, grows more rapidly than in the residential or industrial sectors in all modeled cases. More ›

Oil and natural gas

Across most of our cases, we project U.S. crude oil production fluctuates in a relatively narrow band, first declining slightly in the early 2030s, rising again around 2040, and declining again towards 2050. This fluctuation occurs amid sustained but modest increases in Brent crude oil prices. Most of our cases indicate U.S. crude oil production will hover between 12.4 million barrels per day (b/d) and 12.7 million b/d in 2050, compared with 13.6 million b/d produced in 2025. The cases that model high and low gas supply extend this range considerably, projecting 18.7 million b/d and 6.4 million b/d in 2050, respectively. In our projections, Brent crude oil prices remain below $70 per barrel (b) in real 2025 U.S. dollars through 2030, leading to decreased U.S. crude oil production through the mid-2030s in nearly all cases. We project the Brent crude oil price increases above $75/b in the late 2030s, which then supports increased oil production through most of the 2040s. More ›

Focus: Technologies

Our projections for nuclear capacity remain flat across most of our cases. Of the cases that we consider here, nuclear power generation increases meaningfully in the Low Oil and Gas Supply case, where the price of natural gas rises enough to make new nuclear generation economical in the 2040s. The type of nuclear power considered by the model is based on representative designs for both large- and small-scale light water reactors. The National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) is not optimized to project the economic competitiveness of technologies still experimental or undergoing development, such as other types of small modular reactors, microreactors and fusion. More ›

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