Thursday, November 11, 2010
IEA releases World Energy Outlook 2010, “peak oil is an inevitability”
The International Energy Agency (IEA) today launched its eagerly awaited World Energy Outlook 2010 at the Hotel Crowne Plaza Hotel in London. At the press conference, Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA, began by saying that “recent events have cast an veil of uncertainty over our energy future.
In the wake of recession, the pace of economic recovery certainly promises to have a major impact on energy markets over the next few years.” He highlighted the importance of government actions to energy security and climate change and explained that while considerable progress has been made in the past 12 months in terms of reducing fossil fuel subsidies and the promotion of low carbon technologies (partly due to commitments made by Copenhagen), such policies are not binding.
Mr Tanaka went on to say that the new edition of the WEO marks a departure from previous efforts, in that it makes projections not just based on current policies (the so-called business-as-usual scenario), but also on likely policy developments (the new policies scenario), as well as the 450ppm scenario in which global warming is kept below 2˚C, a result that is now “very very difficult” to obtain. In fact, the WEO 2010 indicates that thanks in part to the collective failure of Copenhagen, the cost of achieving this goal has increased by US$1tn, since the publication of the WEO2009. More >>>
