Last week saw the publication of BP’s Energy Outlook 2030. This is one of the troika of reports that peer into the future world of energy (and, therefore, carbon emission and concentration trajectories). The other two major forecasts are the Annual Energy Outlook issued by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the World Energy Outlook put out by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Through reading these reports, you can benchmark your thoughts as to how the world’s climate will evolve in the decades to come. All three report make depressing reading for anyone vaguely acquainted with the potential impacts from high rates of global warming. BP’s Energy Outlook provides a handy reference chart putting the central energy consumption forecast of all three organisations side by side (click for larger image):
The IEA provides two forecasts: a New Policies Scenario (NPS) that assumes governments will translate vague fossil fuel emission mitigation commitments to actual concrete policies, and a Current Policies Scenario (CPS) that is basically business as usual. The abbreviation ‘toe’ refers to tonnes of oil equivalent.
For BP, the roughly 4.5 billion toe rise in energy consumption from 2011 to 2030 is about 36% in percentage terms. Further, the increase is dominated by fossil fuels as can be seen the chart below (click for larger image):
What key message does BP’s CEO Bob Dudley want to communicate within his introduction to the report: Continue reading
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