Iraq's Power Deficit: A Gap That Keeps Widening, Even as Supply Grows
Iraq's electricity supply has quadrupled since 2010 — but demand has grown even faster, and the gap between what's needed and what's delivered is now larger in absolute terms than it has ever been.
The deficit has never closed — it's only gotten wider
In 2010, Iraq needed about 12 GW and supplied roughly 5 GW — a shortfall of 7 GW. By 2023, needed power had reached 35 GW against just 17 GW supplied, a deficit of 18 GW. In relative terms, Iraq met about 42% of demand in 2010 and still only around 49% in 2023 — real progress, but nowhere near enough to keep pace.
Supply has grown steadily, but rarely accelerated
Supplied power climbed from 5 GW in 2010 to roughly 20 GW in 2024, with only minor pullbacks around 2014 and 2020. This tracks with the underlying generation mix: gas turbines and, more recently, investment (IPP-style) plants have added capacity year after year, while steam turbine output plateaued after 2017.
Demand is the real driver of the widening gap
Needed power shows two distinct growth phases: a steady climb through the mid-2010s, then a steep acceleration from around 2020 onward — jumping from roughly 23 GW to nearly 39 GW in just four years. Population growth, urbanization, and rising appliance and cooling demand are the typical drivers behind a curve like this.
Where the added capacity is actually coming from
- Gas turbines remain the single largest source, growing from about 20 million MWh in 2010 to roughly 58 million MWh in 2024.
- Investment plants went from effectively zero output before 2013 to over 54 million MWh in 2024 — the fastest structural shift in the generation mix.
- Steam turbine generation grew quickly until 2017, then flattened, suggesting Iraq's older baseload fleet has reached a capacity ceiling.
- Power imports, after years of gradual decline, more than doubled in 2024 alone — a sharp one-year reversal worth watching closely.
The takeaway
Iraq has succeeded in diversifying and scaling how it generates power — but not in generating enough of it. Every gain in supply has been outpaced by an even larger gain in demand. Closing the deficit will require more than incremental capacity additions; it requires a step change in generation investment just to catch up to where demand already is, let alone where it's heading.