The World Energy Council is perhaps the most respected voice in energy futures. Its Commission has produced reports (1993) that draw upon the expertise of hundreds of people globally to evaluate energy resources and anticipate demand and supply patterns. They focused on 2020, but considered possibilities out to 2100. They foresee global energy demand rising from 8.8 Gtoe (gigatons of oil equivalent) in 1990 to from 11.3 to 17.2 Gtoe by 2020, with almost all demand increase in the developing countries (1993: 28). Their reference case forecast for 2020 is 13.4 Gtoe, in a global economy they anticipate to grow at 3.3% per year. They suggest that credible scenarios for 2100 bring global energy demand to 20-40 Gtoe or more. Such scenarios assume reductions in energy use per dollar of GDP of from 50-80%. They suggest that it will take great effort to achieve lower CO2 emissions in 2100 than in 1990, but do not believe that 50% reductions are impossible.
They anticipate growth in “renewables” until 2025 to take their contribution from about 12.5% to about 20% of energy supply, but foresee no more than 10%, and possibly only 5%, of supply coming from “new renewables,” as opposed to wood and hydropower (already at 10%). In the longer run, and sometimes more quickly, many observers are optimistic about solar energy. Burkhardt (1995) says that at a conversion efficiency of 20%, solar energy could produce 5 kW of energy (about the average total use per person in Europe) from a surface area of .01 hectare, that at the same efficiency a square of 730 km on its side would produce European energy levels for 5.4 billion humans, and that total solar input to the earth is 130 PW.
The International Energy Agency also makes mid-range energy forecasts (1995, 1996). They anticipate that global energy demand will grow 34-46% from 1993 to 2010 (about 2% annually), 1.4% annually in OECD countries, 0.8% in the FSU, and about 4.0% (IEA, 1996: 1-3). These forecasts assume economic growth at 2.9%, 4.3%, and 5-8% in the three country groupings. Fossil fuels will still supply 90% of commercial energy in 2010, with oil production growing 31-39% between 1995 and 2010, natural gas production growing 34-64%, and solid fuels (including coal and biomass) growing 30%. They see hard coal production growing closer to 50% by 2010. They forecasts stable or rising oil prices, with increases of as much as 50% by 2010.
Neither the WEC nor the IEA foresee significant resource constraints on fossil fuel production prior to the end of their 2010-2020 forecast horizons.
One longer-term forecast, in a joint paper by IEA, IIASA and other authors, sees a 2.6-fold increase in global demand by 2050, with oil up 82%, gas up 280%, coal up 121%, hydro, nuclear and others up 300% to about 20% of the total (see IEA, 1996b: 582).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 1995) provides two forecasts of global primary energy use between 1990 and 2100. They anticipate a doubling and a quadrupling respectively. The first scenario foresees no growth in industrialized countries and a 4.4-fold increase in developing countries (IPCC, 1995, Volume II: 590). These seem remarkably conservative assessments of growth when their economic forecast is for a 24-fold increase in GDP over the same period.
With such conservative demand forecasts, the IPCC is able to discuss many ways in which that demand could be met. They suggest, for example, that global hydropower has a long-term, economically viable potential as much as 3 or 4 times current production. Other low C02 emissions elements of a new energy system (such as nuclear, various solar forms, and decarbonized fossil fuels) could reduce energy system CO2 emissions from 6 GtC per year to 4 GtC in 2050 and 2 GtC in 2100 (IPCC, 1995, Volume 2: 622). The IPCC presents this as a possible scenario, not as a forecast.
The Committee on the Strategic Assessment of the U.S. Department of EnergyCoal Program has explored possible energy futures centered on coal. They believe that production costs of coal are likely to be fairly stable, while domestic production costs of natural gas rise in the face of resource constraints and imported petroleum prices rise. They thus expect coalshare of the national and international energy budget to rise over several decades.
Energy forecasts tend to be driven strongly by assumptions about energy resources (fossil fuels only) and costs of energy production. Looking only at the latter, and focusing only share of energy production/consumption, not total values, Kwasnicki and Kwasnicka (1996) fit a logistic technological diffusion model to past global energy production/consumption. Using the same model for forecasting projects very optimistic figures for nuclear energy. Even after reducing assumptions about the current economic competitiveness of nuclear energy, they forecast that by 2050 the shares of oil, gas, and nuclear will each be about 30% of global energy (with coal falling to about 5%). The weaknesses of their analysis lie in (1) their failure to tie the future of oil, and to a lesser degree of gas, to declining global resource bases, which will surely decrease the competitiveness of those energy forms, and (2) the non-existence of solar energy forms in their analysis (the competitiveness of which have been increasing rapidly).