Win-Win Strategies for Tackling Oil and Natural Gas Constraints while Expanding Renewable Energy Use

Scenarios modelling possible World energy futures out to the year 2100 take little or no account of the problems of oil and natural gas resource constraints while either making very generalised assumptions about what contribution renewable energy could make. Here a more focussed view is taken both of the recoverable oil and natural gas constraints and what determined efforts to expand the larger potential renewable energy sources – especially concentrating solar power (CSP) – could achieve. Other parameters, such as World population projections and economic growth assumptions have a part to play, but taking energy resources on the one hand and the potential for energy efficiency improvements on the other it is conceivable that by 2100 World primary energy use for a population of around 9 billion could be about the current per capita average in Western Europe. There would need to be some “convergence and contraction” of per capita energy use for reasons of equity. The most significant result could be World primary energy demand no more than double current levels but with renewable energy (excluding hydro) accounting for about 75% of the supply by 2100. Although such a scenario implies cumulative carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use somewhat in excess of 1,000 GtC 2005–2100, this is a figure lower than implied even by the IPCC’s SRES B family of scenarios – especially given the higher (UN medium projection) World population trajectory assumed here. Strategies for promoting these outcomes can rationally be pursued simultaneously by oil and natural gas producers and exporters; by oil and gas importers; and by those concerned to expand the use of renewable energy forms. For the World’s energy consumers a satisfactory level of energy service would be achieved for all at a feasible environmental cost.