An alarming global energy outlook
02 December 2011
The world needs more energy, but can scarcely afford to pay for it or burn it. Derek Brower reviews the IEA's World Energy Outlook
IF YOU'RE the kind of person who loses sleep over gloomy economic forecasts, global poverty, the decline of the West, or environmental catastrophe; or whether you'll have enough money to fill the car at eye-watering fuel prices, avoid the International Energy Agency's (IEA) latest World Energy Outlook (WEO2011). It's over 650 doom-laden pages are enough to induce insomnia in even the cheeriest reader.
The era of cheap oil, which sustained the advance of Western economies, is over, the IEA says. Meanwhile, about 40% of the world's population is still without adequate access to basic energy supply. Vast investment is needed, and quickly, in new fossil-fuel production to meet rising demand.
And yet emissions from existing coal, oil and natural gas infrastructure have already taken the world perilously close to its "permissible" emissions limit. In just five years, we will have exceeded it. The window of time in which...