Narrative

Administrator's Foreword

After a 23-year hiatus, I am reintroducing the Administrator’s Foreword as part of the Annual Energy Outlook (AEO). The Foreword affords me an opportunity to provide context and outline future directions for one of our flagship products. More ›

Executive Summary

Our Annual Energy Outlook 2023 (AEO2023) explores long-term energy trends in the United States. Since last year’s AEO, much has changed, most notably the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Public Law 117-169, which altered the policy landscape we use to develop our projections. More ›

Introduction

The Annual Energy Outlook 2023 (AEO2023) explores long-term energy trends in the United States. Since we released the last AEO in early 2022, passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Public Law 117-169, altered the policy landscape we use to develop our projections. The Appendix in this report explains our assumptions around IRA implementation and how we implemented the IRA in our AEO2023 cases. We are also releasing a separate Issues in Focus paper that explores how these assumptions affect our model-based projections. We have seen significant national and international short-term market volatility associated with economic growth as the world reemerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and political instability associated with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We continuously monitor such developments and consider how they may affect our long-term projections. More ›

The Electricity Mix in the United States Shifts from Fossil Fuels to Renewables

In this section, we discuss renewables displacing fossil fuels in the electric power sector. More ›

Technological Advancements and Electrification Decrease Demand-Side Energy Intensity

Moderate growth in U.S. energy consumption is the result of economic growth, population growth, and increased travel offsetting continued energy efficiency improvements. Demand-side energy intensity—the measure of energy consumed per household or per square foot of commercial floorspace—decreases as a result of changes in technology, policy, consumer behavior, demographics, and fuel mix. In this section, we quantify the decreases in CO₂ emissions intensity and demand-side energy intensity, and we discuss equipment changes in the buildings sector, electrification in iron and steel production, and technological advancements and government standards in the transportation sector. More ›

International Demand for Petroleum and Natural Gas Drives U.S. Production, While Domestic Consumption Either Grows Slowly or Decreases

Although U.S. consumption of petroleum products remains relatively flat, international demand supports U.S. exports of petroleum and other liquids (Figure 12). The dynamics of international trade affect domestic production of natural gas and of petroleum and other liquids. More ›

Discussion

Energy market projections are inherently uncertain because many of the events that will shape future energy markets—including developments in policy, technology, demographics, and resources—are not known. To illustrate the role of uncertainty, AEO2023 includes a baseline Reference case and several side cases that systematically vary important underlying assumptions. Many sources of uncertainty exist beyond the ones we test explicitly, including new policy, unforeseen geopolitical events, and rapid technology innovation, particularly around technologies that are in the earliest stages of development. More ›

Appendix

Case Descriptions More ›
Inflation Reduction Act assumptions in the Reference case and core side cases More ›

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