You would think we were swimming in oil. The International Energy Agency's (IEA) latest World Energy Outlook forecasts that the United States will outstrip Saudi Arabia as the world's largest producer by 2017, becoming "all but self-sufficient in net terms" in energy production. While the "peak oil" pessimists are clearly wrong, so is a simplistic picture of fossil fuel abundance.When the IEA predicts an increase in "oil production" from 84 million barrels a day in 2011 to 97 in 2035, it is talking about "natural gas liquids and unconventional sources", which includes a big reliance on "fracking" for shale gas. Conventional oil output will stay largely flat, or fall.
The IEA has been exposed before as having, under US pressure, artificially inflated official reserve figures. And now US energy consultants Ruud Weijermars and Crispian McCredie say there is strong "basis for reasonable doubts about the reliability and durability of US shale gas reserves". The New York Times found that state geologists, industry lawyers and market analysts privately questioned "whether companies are intentionally, and even illegally, overstating the productivity of their wells and the size of their reserves." And former UK chief government scientist Sir David King has concluded that the industry had overstated world oil reserves by about a third. In Nature, he dismissed notions that a shale gas boom would avert an energy crisis, noting that production at wells drops by as much as 90 per cent within the first year.
The rapid decline rates make shale gas distinctly unprofitable. Arthur Berman, a former Amoco petroleum geologist, cites the Eagle Ford shale, Texas, where the decline rate is so high that simply to keep production flat, they will have to drill "almost 1,000 wells" a year, requiring "about $10bn or $12bn a year just to replace supply". In all, "it starts to approach the amount of money needed to bail out the banking industry. Where is that money to come from?"
In September, the leader of the US shale gas revolution, Chesapeake Energy, sold $6.9bn of gas fields and pipelines to stave off collapse. Four months ago Exxon's CEO, Rex Tillerson, told a private meeting: "We're making no money. It's all in the red." The worst-case scenario is that several large oil companies at once face financial distress. Then, says Berman, "you may have a couple of big bankruptcies or takeovers and everybody pulls back, all the money evaporates, all the capital goes away."
Monday, 19 November 2012
I usually just write these sort of crazed ramblings off as some sort of PR campaign on behalf of BHP in particular (someone needs to give Marius Kloppers some good press) and the mining and energy industries in general, as they fight the endless battle of capital against labour.
Maybe I'm missing something but from my high level understanding of the US gas industry, the natural gas "cliff" predicted by the likes of Julian Darley never eventuated courtesy of the shale gas boom - however US gas production isn't making new highs (so where is the glut people keep claiming exists ?) - instead the price collapsed due to a combination of manufacturing moving offshore (particularly gas intensive industries like fertiliser and chemicals) and the recession in the US causing demand to slump. Should the US return to growth and industry return based on the lure of cheap gas I think we'll find gas prices climbing rapidly again.
The IEA gave this sort of delusional thinking (US energy independence ahoy !) more momentum recently with the new World Energy Outlook report echoing Citibank's claims earlier this year that the US will soon be the world's leading oil producer (again, thanks to shale oil). Its probably worthwhile remembering that 10 years ago the IEA was claiming global oil production would now be over 100 million barrels per day (currently it stands at 90 million barrels per day, with significant contributions from biofuels and natural gas liquids).
Technology Review has a look at the report - Shale Oil Will Boost U.S. Production, But It Won’t Bring Energy Independence.
The idea that the U.S. could overtake Saudi Arabia, even temporarily, is a stunning development after years of seemingly inexorable declines in domestic oil production. U.S. production had fallen from 10 million barrels a day in the 1980s to 6.9 barrels per day in 2008, even as consumption increased from 15.7 million barrels per day in 1985 to 19.5 million barrels per day in 2008. The IEA estimates that production could reach 11.1 million barrels per day by 2020, almost entirely because of increases in the production of shale oil, which is extracted using the same horizontal drilling and fracking techniques that have flooded the U.S. with cheap natural gas.The Globe and Mail reports that Deutsche Bank analysts aren't convinced by the IEA's predictions for US oil production - Don’t bet on U.S. oil dominance.As of the end of 2011, production had already increased to 8.1 million barrels per day, almost entirely because of shale oil. Production from two major shale resources in the U.S.—the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana and the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, now total about 900,000 barrels per day. In comparison, Saudi Arabia is expected to produce 10.6 million barrels per day in 2020.The shale oil resource, however, is limited. The IEA expects production to start gradually declining by the mid-2020s, at which time Saudi Arabia will reclaim the top spot. ...
The other potential issue is whether opposition to fracking in local communities might put the brakes on shale oil development, Sears says. Concerns that fracking will contaminate drinking water have led to objections in some areas, as have concerns that shale oil requires far more drilling wells than conventional oil production. Even if the U.S. is able to quickly develop its shale oil resource, it isn’t likely to be enough to completely eliminate oil imports. The IEA expects that the U.S. will still import 3.4 million barrels per day in 2035. The U.S. consumes nearly 19 million barrels per day, leaving a gap of more than 7 million even at the expected peak in shale oil production in the mid-2020s. However, the IEA expects the gap will be reduced partly by increased use of biofuels and natural gas in transportation, as well as improved vehicle efficiency, which could lower demand for oil.
The IEA does conclude that the United States will nearly be energy self-sufficient by 2035, but that’s after offsetting oil imports with exports of coal and natural gas. To be truly energy independent, the United States would have to invest in technology for converting natural gas and coal into the liquid fuels needed for transportation, or have other technical breakthroughs, such as improved batteries or biofuels, that would quickly reduce the demand for oil.
An influential report arguing that the U.S. will soon become the world’s largest oil producer made a lot of headlines, especially in Canada where the implications are huge.OilPrice.com has an interview with longtime shale gas critic Arthur Berman - Shale Gas Will be the Next Bubble to Pop - An Interview with Arthur Berman.Too bad its findings are wrong, argue the energy analysts at Deutsche Bank.
It’s not that the oil isn’t there, but the conditions needed to develop it are lacking, Deutsche Bank analysts Paul Sankey, David Clark and Silvio Micheloto write in a note entitled ‘Why the U.S. WON"T surpass Saudi Arabia as Number 1 oil producer.’ (The emphasis is the authors’. And if you’re wondering if these guys know what they are talking about, Mr. Sankey has been ranked No. 1 for the last two years by Institutional Investor for coverage of integrated oil companies.)
A combination of U.S. policy restricting exports and sagging domestic U.S. demand for oil products will keep prices soft relative to the rest of the world, making the projects needed to create the huge U.S. supply growth uneconomical, they wrote Thursday in their critique of the report by the International Energy Agency which pointed to a huge shift toward North America in oil production.
“We don’t think the U.S. can become the largest oil producer in the world. Why not? Price, cost and returns. None are really dealt with by the IEA.”
The “shale revolution” has been grabbing a great deal of headlines for some time now. A favourite topic of investors, sector commentators and analysts – many of whom claim we are about to enter a new energy era with cheap and abundant shale gas leading the charge. But on closer examination the incredible claims and figures behind many of the plays just don’t add up. To help us to look past the hype and take a critical look at whether shale really is the golden goose many believe it to be or just another over-hyped bubble that is about to pop, we were fortunate to speak with energy expert Arthur Berman.The Oil Drum also has some cynical words about the potential of shale gas - Tech Talk - Global Oil Supply .Arthur is a geological consultant with thirty-four years of experience in petroleum exploration and production. He is currently consulting for several E&P companies and capital groups in the energy sector. ...
Oilprice.com: How do you see the shale boom impacting U.S. foreign policy?
Arthur Berman: Well, not very much is my simple answer.
A lot of investors from other parts of the world, particularly the oil-rich parts have been making somewhat high-risk investments in the United States for many years and, for a long time, those investments were in real estate.
Now these people have shifted their focus and are putting cash into shale. There are two important things going on here, one is that the capital isn't going to last forever, especially since shale gas is a commercial failure. Shale gas has lost hundreds of billions of dollars and investors will not keep on pumping money into something that doesn’t generate a return.
The second thing that nobody thinks very much about is the decline rates shale reservoirs experience. Well, I've looked at this. The decline rates are incredibly high. In the Eagleford shale, which is supposed to be the mother of all shale oil plays, the annual decline rate is higher than 42%.
They're going to have to drill hundreds, almost 1000 wells in the Eagleford shale, every year, to keep production flat. Just for one play, we're talking about $10 or $12 billion a year just to replace supply. I add all these things up and it starts to approach the amount of money needed to bail out the banking industry. Where is that money going to come from? Do you see what I'm saying?
Oilprice.com: You've been noted suggesting that shale gas will be the next bubble to collapse. How do you think this will occur and what will the effects be?
Arthur Berman: Well, it depends, as with all collapses, on how quickly the collapse occurs. I guess the worst-case scenario would be that several large companies find themselves in financial distress.
Chesapeake Energy recently had a very close call. They had to sell, I don't know how many, billions of dollars worth of assets just to maintain paying their obligations, and that's the kind of scenario I'm talking about. You may have a couple of big bankruptcies or takeovers and everybody pulls back, all the money evaporates, all the capital goes away. That's the worst-case scenario.
Oilprice.com: Energy became a big part of the election race, but what did you make of the energy policies and promises that were being made by both candidates?
Arthur Berman: Mitt Romney, particularly, talked about how the United States would be able to achieve energy independence in five years. Well, that's garbage.
One of the headlines this week from the IEA Report suggests that the United States will be the top global oil producer in five years. Yet back in DeSoto Parish in Louisiana, where the Haynesville Shale discovery in 2008 started the bonanza, revenues are now falling and school board budgets are strapped as the end of the glory days are beginning to appear.Just this week Aubrey McClendon said that Chesapeake’s prospects for oil in Ohio, where Chesapeake had high hopes for the Utica Shale, are now dim. It is easy to look at one of the large maps showing all the shale deposits in the United States that the Oil and Gas Journal include in their print editions, and to be carried away (as the IEA apparently are) with the vast acreage that is shaded on the map. Unfortunately, as we can see, reality tells another story. The size of the resources have been measured in the past, and with the best plays being given preference, the recognition of decline rates and unprofitable wells have not yet been given the prominence in the popular press that they will ultimately draw.
It seems unrealistic to anticipate the levels now being projected for future North American production of oil. Nevertheless, these projections do tend to crowd conflicting stories on the subject out of the spotlight. Further, if the predictions for American production gains, even in the short term, turn out to be optimistic, then the impacts may be even more exaggerated than is currently appreciated. Consider that OPEC now expects that North America will continue to provide the greatest y-o-y increase in supply over other nations, and there are in fact, few other nations that will contribute much more in the next year.
I am less persuaded myself that using a thousand oil rigs to generate an extra one million barrels per day of oil is necessarily a sign of a large and long-term sustainable increase in US oil production (as opposed to, say, frenzied scraping of the bottom of the barrel). But, still, I'm not certain beyond a reasonable doubt just how deep this particular barrel can be scraped.At any rate, one thing that is interesting is that the chart above shows the US second peak just reaching 10mbd of oil, and yet the US will be the largest producer of oil. Since the IEA says Saudi production is currently at 9.5mbd and Russia at 10.75mbd, the implication is that neither Russia or Saudi Arabian production will increase at all between now and 2020 when the US will surpass them.
Apparently, the strategy of massed hordes of drilling rigs fracking for shale oil can only be of benefit in the United States.
It used to be Saudi Arabia that was used to fill in the wedge between desired supply and expected demand in official energy projections. Apparently the agencies have now accepted that Saudi Arabia cannot or will not increase production and the US is now being assigned the role of supplier of last resort for future energy projections.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
The International Energy Agency has outlined, in detail, its vision of how solar energy technologies could form the backbone of the world’s electricity network, providing half its electricity needs by 2060.
The scenario, outlined in the IEA’s Solar Energy Perspectives, released last week, was first canvassed in late August. Essentially, it looks at the options available to the world if it took decisive, but belated action, on climate change, and alternative technologies such as nuclear and carbon capture and storage failed to deliver as promised.
And, for the first time, it also recognises a future where baseload power may no longer provide the bedrock of the world’s energy needs, as it has done for a century or more, but is replaced by a system of flexible and inflexible energy sources, where intermittent sources such as wind and solar PV are complemented by “dispatchable" and flexible sources such as solar thermal with storage, hydro, and gas.
The IEA has been canvassing a range of scenarios over how the energy systems of the future may look under various climate and energy policy responses. Under its 450 scenario, where the world holds true to its political target of limiting global warming to an average 2°C by capping greenhouse gas emissions at 450 parts per million, solar accounts for less than 20 per cent of total generation by 2050, rising to 25 per cent of generation in its “high renewable" scenario, where renewables need to account for 75 per cent of the world’s generation to make up for the lack of nuclear or CCS.
However, in its “Testing the Limits" scenario, the IEA considers what would happen if the world made a belated but sharper change in its energy policy – whether for security, economic or climate reasons, as seems increasingly likely given the nature of the international climate talks – and if many countries decided to abandon nuclear power and carbon capture and storage was found to be costlier, more limited or not as safe as hoped, which it concedes is quite possible.
In this scenario, the IEA says, solar energy could become the backbone of a largely renewable energy system worldwide. The make-up of energy sources varies from region to region, thanks to climate variations, but most of the estimated nine billion people will live in warmer climates, and areas with strong solar radiation (such as north Africa and the Middle East to Europe, and Australia to Indonesia), and become net exporters of solar energy. In colder climates such as Europe, wind and solar PV match the seasonal demand peaks.
Globally, the IEA scenario has solar thermal accounting for 28 per cent of total electricity generation by 2060, with some 6,000GW of capacity with storage (it has around 1GW now). Solar PV accounts for 20 per cent of generation, with 12,000GW of installed capacity (about 40GW now), and solar fuels add a further 2 per cent of generation.
Of the other technologies, wind power also makes up 28 per cent of generation, with 10,000GW of capacity, hydropower provides 10 per cent, and baseload – a mixture of geothermal, nuclear and biomass with CCS – provides 11 per cent of generation with around 1,200GW of capacity. Natural gas has capacity of around 3000GW, but is used sparingly as a balancing fuel and accounts for just 1 per cent of total generation.
The IEA does not break down the energy contributions in individual regions, but it should be noted that in its “high renewable" 450 scenario, the IEA says 40 per cent of the energy in regions such as Australia, central Asia, parts of India and south-western US, and the Middle East, could come from solar thermal alone.
As for costs, the IEA says, it is simply a matter of planning ahead. “Renewables in general, and solar energy in particular, may not always offer the lowest cost options to meet our energy needs, nor even the cheapest way of doing so while reducing global carbon emissions," it notes. But because of the risk that other options may fall short, solar technologies offering “indigenous, inexhaustible resources", are more secure, less likely to experience price volatility once the technologies are mature, are environmentally sustainable, and “the cheapest known antidote to catastrophic climate change, even if they are or appear to be higher-cost options in other ways."
It says that by 2060, the world is four times richer, but only consuming 50 per cent more energy because of energy efficiency measures. “Even if the cost of one energy unit were twice as much as today, the total energy expenditure would be proportionally smaller than today. It is thus conceivable to prefer an energy future that provides security, economic stability and preserves the sustainability of ecosystems and the environment, even if it is not the least-cost option when such considerations are ignored."
But it may not be that expensive. The IEA notes that solar PV is already competitive with “bulk power" in many areas, particularly islands, off-grid locations, and where PV is competing with oil. Solar thermal is also likely to fall substantially – a recent tender for a 50MW solar thermal plant in Mongolia was bid at $140/MWh. It says that solar thermal will be competitive with intermediate and peaking plant by 2020, and by 2030, solar costs will range from $50/MWh in the best solar regions, to $150/MWh in the worst. Other technologies will be grouped north or south of $100/MWh. It notes that, in the case of building integrated solar PV, where solar will be crucial to the value, “the cost of PV would almost vanish in the market segment where it currently costs the most."
BusinessGreen reports that South Africa has approved a raft of renewable energy projects, including 2 solar thermal power plants - South Africa green lights 1.4GW of new wind and solar power projects
Plans to build more than 3.5GW of renewable energy capacity in South Africa have taken a major step forward after 28 wind and solar power projects were approved as part of a government tender round that should serve to burnish the host country's green credentials as the Durban Summit enters its final few days.
The government yesterday awarded preferred bidder status to projects totalling 1,416MW of capacity, split between wind power, solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar power projects.
The 28 winners were selected from a total of 53 bids and now have until June 2012 to secure financial close and then begin construction.
The government awarded preferred bidder status to 18 solar PV projects totalling 632MW, and eight wind power projects, totalling 634MW. Two concentrated solar projects totalling 150MW, including the 100MW Abengoa-led KaXu Solar One also got the green light.
Climate Progress has a post looking at Interview of David Crane, CEO of US utility NRG Energy - Utility CEO on Solar: In “3 to 5 Years You’ll Be Able to Get Power Cheaper from the Roof of Your House Than From the Grid”.
David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy: The fundamental issue of our day [is] climate change…. The people who were opposed to climate change legislation used one of two tactics. They either said, “Well, we don’t believe it’s happening.” Which, of course, is just a bald-faced lie.
Or the second part of the one/two punch is, “We can’t afford to do anything about it because a synonym for the word “green” is “expensive.” But looking forward, electric vehicles will be far cheaper to operate than internal combustion engine vehicles. And solar panels on the roof will provide power more cheaply than taking power from the grid.
That’s from a Yale Environment 360 Interview of David Crane, the CEO of one of America’s’s largest electric utilities. It produces power for some 20 million U.S. households, and over 90% of NRG’s power comes from natural gas and coal. But Crane says the future — the near future — will be different.
Climate Progress has written a number of articles on the sharply declining cost of solar photovoltaics (see “Solar is Ready Now: ‘Ferocious Cost Reductions’ Make Solar PV Competitive“). It’s good to hear from a leading utility executive that the facts on the ground bear our analyses out.
Here are more excerpts from this remarkable interview, including his discussion of “democratization of customer choice” and the key role of electric vehicles:
e360: What can you do as a major power generator to nudge the country toward a renewable energy future?
Crane:I think the most important thing is to make the American public aware that now they have energy choices in a way that they never really did. You don’t just have to settle for using electricity in your house that is supplied by coal-fired power plants on the grid. And you don’t just have to put oil that comes from the Middle East in your gas tank. You can buy an electric car. You can put solar panels on your roof. You have choices now…..
e360: Could you talk about NRG’s move into utility-scale solar, and also your vision long-term of large-scale solar, versus distributed [smaller-scale] solar power?
Crane: So far most of our business has been utility-scale solar — gigantic plants in the desert. The biggest solar [project] we have is 295 megawatts. That’s something like 6 million solar panels. Those projects are really dependent on two things, because they cost over a billion dollars: the Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Guarantee Program and California’s 33 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard, and the fact that the two largest California utilities have been willing to sign long-term agreements in order to meet their requirements [to obtain 33 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2020] under the Renewable Portfolio Standards. We have over 800 megawatts of projects out there, which is a huge number for solar. But our view is that because the DOE Loan Guarantee Program is going away and the California utilities are coming close to putting themselves in a position to satisfy the requirement, there will be fewer of those projects in the future.
We expect to continue to pursue that business and to do well, but that’s not going to be the explosive-growth part of the industry. The explosive-growth part will be between distributed solar power, which is like 1 to 10 megawatt size, and then residential, which is measured in kilowatts. We have so many parking lots and warehouse rooftops and residential locations where people want to reduce their monthly electric bills and that is just an enormous area of growth….
e360: Can you explain your three-pronged approach to transforming the country’s electricity system.
Crane: Democratization of customer choice in our sector begins with two things. One is the electric car and the other is the solar panel on the roof. I think it actually starts with the electric car. You put the electric car in your garage and you really have a mini power plant because these batteries that drive electric cars are quite substantial pieces of equipment. The average car in the United States is sitting still about 22 hours a day. Those are hours where the car can either be accepting power from the grid or selling power through the grid in a phenomenon we refer to as V2G, vehicle-to-grid. That leads to the third leg of the trilogy, which is the smart meter, because between a smart meter in your house, combined with time and use pricing, you essentially want that electric car to be charging between midnight and four in the morning. And you want to have it available to basically drain itself a little between 2 and 6 o’clock in the afternoon. But someone has to tell it what’s going on with the grid at that point. And that’s what the smart meter does.
Right now around the country people are trying to introduce smart meters as just another information device. In our view, no one wants to pay for another information device, particularly when the information being given is about something that people don’t care about, which is their electricity use. So smart meters will only be accepted by the American public when they do something of value. And the first thing that they’ll do of value is they will sense when it’s expensive to run electricity and they’ll turn appliances off around the house. But the next thing they’ll do, which is the most valuable thing that will actually put dollars in your pocketbook, is that when the smart meter recognizes that the wholesale system is getting tight and there is good pricing, it will actually sell into the grid from the car battery. Or if power from the grid is getting really expensive, the smart meter might just turn the house off from the grid and then run the key appliances in the house off the electric car in the garage.
Then you have the solar panels on the roof. If you tie in a rooftop solar panel with a smart meter, then it’s exactly analogous to the electric car battery. The smart meter could turn off the house from the grid at 3 in the afternoon and rely exclusively on the power that’s coming from the solar panels on the roof, saving the customer a lot of money on their bill from the grid. And if the person puts a big solar panel on their roof, they could sell power from that. ...
Sunday, 13 November 2011
That is the prominent quote headlining the English language executive summary of the World Energy Outlook Report of the International Energy Agency released Wednesday.
The following are selected passages from the projections made by the IEA. Bolding is as in the original, underlining and [text ] added.
There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is underway. Although the recovery in the world economy since 2009 has been uneven, and future economic prospects remain uncertain, global primary energy demand rebounded by a remarkable 5% in 2010, pushing CO2 emissions to a new high. Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400 billion.
…
Despite the priority in many countries to increase energy efficiency, global energy intensity worsened for the second straight year. Against this unpromising background, events such as those at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the turmoil in parts of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have cast doubts on the reliability of energy supply, while concerns about sovereign financial integrity have shifted the focus of government attention away from energy policy and limited their means of policy intervention, boding ill for agreed global climate change objectives.
The assumptions of a global population that increases by 1.7 billion people and 3.5% annual average growth in the global economy generate ever-higher demand for energy
services and mobility. A lower rate of global GDP growth in the short-term than assumed in this Outlook would make only a marginal difference to longer-term trends.
The age of fossil fuels is far from over, but their dominance declines. Demand for all fuels rises, but the share of fossil fuels in global primary energy consumption falls slightly from 81% in 2010 to 75% in 2035; natural gas is the only fossil fuel to increase its share in the global mix over the period to 2035. In the power sector, renewable energy technoogies, led by hydro-power and wind, account for half of the new capacity installed to meet growing demand.
We cannot afford to delay further action to tackle climate change if the long-term target of limiting the global average temperature increase to 2°C, as analysed in the 450 Scenario, is to be achieved at reasonable cost. In the New Policies Scenario, the world is on a trajectory that results in a level of emissions consistent with a long-term average temperature increase of more than 3.5°C. Without these new policies, we are on an even more dangerous track, for a temperature increase of 6°C or more.
Four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permissible by 2035 in the 450 Scenario are already “locked-in” by our existing capital stock (power plants, buildings, factories, etc.). If stringent new action is not forthcoming by 2017, the energy-related infrastructure then in place will generate all the CO2 emissions allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035, leaving no room for additional power plants, factories and other infrastructure unless they are zero-carbon… Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment avoided in the power sector before 2020 an additional $4.3 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.
In the 450 Scenario, we need to achieve an even higher pace of change, with efficiency improvements accounting for half of the additional reduction in emissions. The most important contribution to reaching energy security and climate goals comes from the energy that we do not consume.
Rising transport demand and upstream costs reconfirm the end of cheap oil. All of the net increase in oil demand comes from the transport sector in emerging economies, as economic growth pushes up demand for personal mobility and freight.
Four-fifths of oil consumed in non-OECD Asia comes from imports in 2035, compared with just over half in 2010. Globally, reliance grows on a relatively small number of producers, mainly in the MENA region, with oil shipped along vulnerable supply
Coal has met almost half of the increase in global energy demand over the last decade. Whether this trend alters and how quickly is among the most important questions for the future of the global energy economy. Maintaining current policies would see coal use rise by a further 65% by 2035, overtaking oil as the largest fuel in the global energy mix.
China’s consumption of coal is almost half of global demand and its Five-Year Plan for 2011 to 2015, which aims to reduce the energy and carbon intensity of the economy, will be a determining factor for world coal markets. China’s emergence as a net coal importer in 2009 led to rising prices and new investment in exporting countries, including Australia, Indonesia, Russia and Mongolia.
India’s coal use doubles in the New Policies Scenario, so that India displaces the United States as the world’s second-largest coal consumer and becomes the largest coal importer in the 2020s.
If the average efficiency of all coal-fired power plants were to be five percentage points higher than in the New Policies Scenario in 2035 … CO2 emissions from the power sector [would be lower] by 8%
…CCS plays a role only towards the end of the projection period…
…If CCS is not [or can not be] widely deployed in the 2020s, an extraordinary burden would rest on other low-carbon technologies…
For further detail go to the website. There is a 6 page factsheet ...
