Global energy perspectives to 2060 – WEC's World Energy Scenarios 2019

TLDR

Recent signals indicate a major transformation in the energy sector over the coming decades. The article presents three World Energy Council scenarios, compares them with EIA and IEA forecasts, and outlines cost‑efficient strategies to keep global warming below 2 °C. The authors develop three long‑term scenarios and benchmark them against EIA and IEA projections. The scenarios project a more moderate rise in total energy use, a doubling of global electricity consumption over 40 years, and a shift to renewable‑driven demand growth, with electricity’s share of final consumption rising.

Abstract

The recent signals in the energy sector indicate a major transformation taking shape in the energy sector in the decades to come. The potential trends are highlighted in three scenarios published by the World Energy Council in September 2019 and further presented in detail and in a long-term perspective in this article. Compared to developments of the past, the scenario results reveal that the coming decades will be different, where future total energy consumption increases more moderately, while the share of electricity of final consumption increases further. Global electricity consumption more than doubles over the next 40 years. However, this represents a remarkable slowdown in growth compared to past trends. And unlike in the past, demand growth is covered primarily by rising contributions from renewable energy, which in particular applies to the electricity sector. This article not only presents the results of this World Energy Council flagship study in a long-term perspective, but it also compares them with the future paths presented by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) in the fall of 2019. The biggest challenge, which results from the findings of these studies, lies in limiting the rise in global temperatures to less than 2° Celsius compared to the preindustrial level, as agreed by the international community at the end of 2015 in the Paris Climate Agreement. It outlines which strategies will enable the resulting requirements to be met in a cost-efficient manner – as a prerequisite to the desired success.