Back to Energy Filter homepageThe IEA could not have stage-managed a more dramatic backdrop for the launch of its 2007 World Energy Outlook. $100 oil says more about Chinese demand than a thousand forecast charts ever could. When the IEA’s Fatih Birol warns that "the wheels could come off" the world’s oil supplies, you have to believe him.
There are many good points well made in the IEA’s analysis. But there is something of a contradiction in its position: it wants oil producers, including Opec, to invest in capacity to produce more oil, while trying to persuade the world to use less of it. It is no wonder Opec is suspicious.
As Mr Birol says, however, the threat of oil shortages is fundamentally less of an issue than climate change. The world can eventually adjust to oil running out. Our chances of adjusting to a world that is six degrees C hotter do not look so good. And that, unfortunately, is about the size of the temperature increase implied by climate models given the IEA’s projections of what will happen under "business as usual" scenarios, with China doubling its coal-fired power generation capacity between now and 2030.
We should probably be grateful if the world never does get beyond 100m barrels a day of oil production, as Total’s Christophe de Margerie thinks it won’t. That would at least help keep climate change within manageable bounds. The IEA’s "alternative scenario", including more energy efficiency and renewables, needs a mere 100m barrels of oil a day in 2030, and keeps the temperature increase down to a - just about - bearable 3 degrees C. Unless we make up the shortfall from coal to liquids, of course.