IEA World Energy Outlook 2011 – Nov 9

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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

The International Energy Agency ‘World Energy Outlook 2011’ was released today. Much comment is likely to follow. The Executive Summary is available for download here: WEO 2011 Executive Summary. ALso Key Graphs, and the Presentation to the Press.

Here are some initial headlines from the mainstream press:

World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns
Fiona Harvey, The Guardian
The world is likely to build so many new fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever”, according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.

Anything built from now on that produces carbon will continue to do so for decades to come, and this “lock-in” effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world’s foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this infrastructure is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

“The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), told the Guardian. “I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.”…
(9 November 2011)

Arab Spring disrupts energy investment-IEA
Muriel Boselli and Sybille de La Hamaide, Reuters
The Arab Spring has disrupted investment plans in oil and gas projects as some governments in the region have shifted their focus to meet increasing demands from their population, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.

As a result, this could in the next five years push oil prices higher, the IEA’s chief economist Fatih Birol said at a briefing on the sidelines of the agency’s two-day ministerial meeting.

The IEA estimates the world needs to spend $38 trillion to meet projected energy demand up to 2035, up 15 percent from their 2010 forecast of $33 trillion.

World energy ministers and industry leaders started a two-day meeting on Tuesday hosted by the IEA to discuss investment needs with energy-hungry emerging economies.

Birol said there was reluctance from some oil producers to invest enough…
(9 November 2011)

Energy Costs to Rise ‘Viciously’ Without Nuclear, IEA Says
Lananh Nguyen, Bloomberg
Energy will become “viciously more expensive” and polluting if governments don’t promote renewable and nuclear power in the next two decades instead of burning coal, the International Energy Agency said.

Global demand for energy is set to increase 40 percent by 2035, the Paris-based agency said today in its annual World Energy Outlook report. Consumption will rise 1.3 percent a year to 16.96 billion metric tons of oil equivalent in 2035, spurred by China and other emerging economies, the IEA said.

The worst atomic accident in 25 years at the Fukushima plant in Japan on March 11 led Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, to close eight of its 17 reactors permanently. Nuclear plants generate power continuously while emitting virtually no greenhouse gases. Without nuclear, keeping world temperature gains at 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) will cost an extra $1.5 trillion through 2035, the IEA said.
(9 November 2011)