Energy

The World Energy Technology Outlook report (WETO-H2) provides a coherent framework to analyse the drivers and constraints in world energy to 2050, energy development and CO2 emissions. WETO-H2 presents three different scenarios for the future world energy system up to 2050: the Reference case, the Carbon constraint case and the Hydrogen case. The report highlights the main future energy, environmental and technological challenges that Europe will have to face in order to stay competitive while promoting new clean energy technologies.

The world energy, technology and climate policy outlook (WETO) positions Europe in a global context. It provides a coherent framework to analyse the energy, technology and environment trends and issues over the period from now to 2030. In this way, it supports long-term European policy-making particularly considering the questions related to (1) the security of energy supply; (2) the European research area; (3) Kyoto targets and beyond. Using the POLES energy model and starting from a set of clear key assumptions on economic activity, population and hydrocarbon resources, WETO describes in detail the evolution of world and European energy systems, taking into account the impacts of climate change policies. The reference scenario encompasses international energy prices, primary fuel supply (oil, gas and coal), energy demand (global, regional and sectoral), power generation technologies and carbon dioxide emissions trends. To face uncertainties, WETO presents alternative scenarios corresponding to different assumptions on availability of oil and gas resources (low/high cases) and on technological progress (gas, coal, nuclear and renewable cases). Two major policy issues are addressed: (1) the outlook of the European Union gas market in a world perspective (impressive growth in gas demand and increasing dependence on energy imports); (2) the impacts of greenhouse gas emission reduction policies on the world energy system and on progress in power generation technologies. The rigorous analysis of long-term scenarios, with particular attention to the European Union in a global context, will enable policy-makers to define better energy, technology and environmental policies for a sustainable future.

Two major challenges will have to be addressed on the way towards a “postcarbon society”: the adoption of new forms of energy (cf. security of supply, availability of resources, oil price) and the adaptation to the climate change that is already taking place.
Most of the time, these issues are tackled from the supply side and the technological perspective. But the demand side is crucial. The political initiatives, the economic incentives and the social behaviour can make a difference. This publication covers issues including in the long term such as globalisation, behavioural changes, market mechanisms, “rethinking the city”, social acceptability, job creation, land-use and public services. It also addresses the role of politics and social actors (businesses and trade unions) as well as the new governance for a post-carbon society.

This publication aims to give an overview of the methods and results concerning the future challenges in energy. Using various tools for energy foresight – quantitative models, Delphi survey and back-casting approach – Energy futures analyses Europe in a world context. It also highlights the importance of research in the energy field. Finally, it presents EU projects in this field at the cross roads of technology and socio-economy.

The European Union is concerned by the competitiveness, security and sustainability of its energy system. This publication presents the main results of the ENCOURAGED project that assessed the potential energy corridors between the EU and its neighbouring countries addressing in particular the issues on natural gas, electricity and hydrogen. The EU neighbouring countries are the main suppliers and transit countries of oil and natural gas. The dependency of the EU on imported gas supplies is largely increasing in the next years. Therefore, the role of neighbouring countries will grow significantly in the next decades and will probably extend to electricity exchanges and perhaps, in the next decades, to hydrogen supply. Three main points are of particular importance for the integration of the energy markets of the EU and neighbouring countries: to get compatible interconnections, compatible market framework and compatible environmental policies.

This report has been prepared in response to the invitation for a study on Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy, in support of the work of the European Forum for Forward-Looking Activities. The aim of this Study is to develop mechanisms for ensuring that Horizon 2020 takes account of a wide range and fuller set of challenges for the area under review. The scope of the study was broadly defined by the societal challenge in this area as set out in the proposal for Horizon 2020, summarised by the objective:
“The specific objective is to make the transition to a reliable, sustainable and competitive energy system, in the face of increasingly scarce resources, increasing energy needs and climate change.” (DS 1293/12, p.93)
The key questions addressed in this report are:
- Will the implementation of the SET-Plan help to link research and innovation programmes?
- Identification of the main challenges and sub-challenges in respect of the transition of the energy system;
- Comparison of these challenges with the announced broad lines of activities under Horizon 2020;
- Assessment of the extent to which these challenges are disruptive for the assumptions or proposals of Horizon 2020;
- Identification of any adjustments to the themes in the light of this; and
- Whether any important challenges or issues are missing from the announced broad lines of activities.

"The energy challenge is a challenge with many dimensions. At the broad level there are issues like sustainability of energy use, security and competitiveness of supply. These broad issues themselves can be broken down to many smaller but no less important issues as e.g. global and European energy demand and supply, the availability of fossil fuel resources, renewable energy, energy transmission networks, prices for oil, gas and electricity to cite only a few of them. All these issues can be further broken down from a geographical point of view, from the global to the European, to the national and potentially to the regional level.
This large number of dimensions makes it difficult to get hold of all the issues involved in the energy challenge at the same time, nevertheless this paper aims at providing an overview of the energy challenge and its dimension. At the same time it is clear that this overview can only be the start of a much more detailed analysis, hence it is considered to be a more or less suitable basis for further research. After all this seems highly necessary in order to develop a clear view on what the effects of the energy challenge on the European regions will be.
The present paper, which intends to cover most of the dimension of the energy challenge, develops a specific structure of analysis in order to present the results in a coherent way. Amongst the many possibilities our structure splits the energy dimensions according to whether they pertain to the supply or the demand side of energy or whether they pertain to the transaction from the supply to the demand side. Thus on the supply side we analyse: Global and European energy supply, renewables and technology. With respect to energy transaction issues we focus on pipelines and LNG, energy (electricity) networks, oil prices, electricity and gas prices (incl. environmental taxes). On the demand side we analyse: global and European energy demand, GHG emissions, energy efficiency, economic effects, emission trading and finally carbon storage.
Given the number of raised issues the intention of the analysis if to provide an overview of, while an in depth analysis of each point would be far beyond the scope of the paper.
Given this the paper finally attempts to analyse the potential negative and positive impacts these dimension could have on regional disparities. Given the severe data and information limitations at the regional level and, given the fact that the energy challenge as such is a complex issue, it is extremely difficult to define two clear scenarios, as many assumptions have to be made about potential positive and negative developments in each of these challenges. Therefore, the scenario analysis is a highly speculative exercise that goes most of the components of the energy challenge and analysing them whether on to what extent they might affect the EU regions. All components are analysed with respect to their potential positive and negative impacts on regional disparities as well as with respect to the data available to investigate this issue further. As such the analysis below provides modules for scenario building, allowing to chose for each component of the energy challenge whether it is assumed to apply until 2020 or not."

The World Energy Scenarios: Composing energy futures to 2050 is the result of a three-year study conducted by over 60 experts from nearly 30 countries, with modelling provided by the Paul Scherrer Institute. The report assesses two contrasting policy scenarios, the more consumer driven Jazz scenario and the more voter-driven Symphony scenario with a key differentiator being the ability of countries to pass through the Doha Climate Gateway. The WEC scenarios use an explorative approach to assess what is actually happening in the world now, to help gauge what will happen in the future and the real impact of today’s choices on tomorrow’s energy landscape.
Rather than telling policymakers and senior energy leaders what to do in order to achieve a specific policy goal, the WEC’s World Energy Scenarios allow them to test the key assumptions that decision-makers decide to better shape the energy of tomorrow.