Main content | back to top

The energy challenge

The world will need vast amounts of extra energy in the coming decades to reduce poverty. Countries' supplies will have to be kept safe from disruption. And this energy will need to be produced in environmentally and socially responsible ways, including dealing with greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) emissions. This is the energy challenge. Meeting it is fast becoming one of the defining tests facing society – and our industry – this century.

Two future energy scenarios

Three hard truths make this challenge tougher:

   1. Demand for energy is growing rapidly as several large countries enter the most energy-intensive phase of economic development.
   2. Supplies of easily accessible oil and natural gas will probably no longer keep up with demand after 2015. To close the gap, the world will have no choice but to use energy more efficiently and increase its use of other sources of energy. This means more renewables like solar, wind and biofuels, more nuclear energy, more coal, and more oil and natural gas from difficult-to-reach locations or unconventional sources like oil sands.
   3. And that as a result, CO₂ emissions from energy, responsible for more than half of man-made GHG emissions, are set to rise, even as concerns about climate change grow.

Our scenarios and climate change

Finding ways to manage GHG emissions is one of the most important long-term challenges facing society. The 2007 assessment by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, confirmed, now with near certainty, that man-made climate change is happening. It also concluded that GHG emissions – from energy, agriculture and deforestation – need to peak within 10–20 years and then fall substantially to reduce the risk of dangerous climate change levels.

In Scramble, this does not happen. Government policies are too little, too late. There is no effective framework for managing GHGs. As a result, CO₂ and other GHG emissions rise steadily until around 2040. By 2050, GHG emissions are heading towards concentration levels in the atmosphere far above the levels that scientists indicate are safe.

In Blueprints, local and national governments introduce new standards, taxes and other policies to change behaviour, and improve both the energy efficiency and CO₂performance of buildings, vehicles and transport fuels. Eventually, politicians agree to harmonised policies. Emission trading systems gain international acceptance and spread, putting an internationally recognised price on GHG emissions that accelerates innovation. As a result, vehicle fuel efficiency jumps significantly. Electric cars make a breakthrough after 2030. And the use of CO₂capture and storage at industrial sites takes off – something that proves essential for managing CO₂emissions. By 2020, CO₂emissions stop rising and then start to fall gradually. By 2050, GHG levels in Blueprints are on track to stabilise at levels in the atmosphere far lower than in "Scramble". But "Blueprints" also makes the scale of the climate change challenge clear. Even with these wide-ranging and rapid changes – and reductions in emissions of other GHGs like methane from agriculture – atmospheric concentrations of GHGs in a "Blueprints" world still stabilise at levels higher than the 450 parts per million that scientists are currently calling for.