IEA economist: ‘We have to leave oil before it leaves us’

[Graeme]

IEA economist: ‘We have to leave oil before it leaves us’

The International Energy Agency (IEA)’s annual World Energy Outlook, due for publication on 9 November, will contain alarming research that the world is on track for a catastrophic rise in global temperatures unless fossil fuel subsidies are cut, energy efficiency is improved, and more countries introduce some form of carbon pricing.


You’ve said in the past that you believe that the world has already passed its ‘peak oil’ moment – the point at which the amount of oil already used outweighs the amount left in the ground. How far past that moment do you think we are, and what are the economic and environmental consequences?

We have said that we have seen the peak of commercial oil. There is still uncommercial oil and other forms coming and we will definitely need oil for our mobility systems for cars, trucks and jets and for our economic daily life to continue. However, one day we will run out of oil - not tomorrow or the day after but one day we will. Given its strategic importance for our societies, it is important to prepare our societies for that very day and try to find alternatives to oil especially in transportation systems. These could be electric cars, hybrid cars, natural gas, or biofuels-driven cars, or putting more emphasis on mass transportation.

When we talk about CO2 emissions, people think directly about coal. But if you look at the numbers, the contribution of oil to global CO2 emissions is only a few percentage points lower than coal. Therefore it needs to be taken closely into consideration. We’re not running out of oil today or tomorrow but we need to prepare ourselves for the day that we do. We have to leave oil before it leaves us.

euractiv

[Pops]

August, 2009:

"One day we will run out of oil, it is not today or tomorrow, but one day we will run out of oil and we have to leave oil before oil leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day," Dr Birol said. "The earlier we start, the better, because all of our economic and social system is based on oil, so to change from that will take a lot of time and a lot of money and we should take this issue very seriously," he said.

...

The IEA estimates that the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline it had estimated in 2007, which it now acknowledges to be wrong.

"If we see a tightness of the markets, people in the street will see it in terms of higher prices, much higher than we see now. It will have an impact on the economy, definitely, especially if we see this tightness in the markets in the next few years," Dr Birol said.

"It will be especially important because the global economy will still be very fragile, very vulnerable. Many people think there will be a recovery in a few years' time but it will be a slow recovery and a fragile recovery and we will have the risk that the recovery will be strangled with higher oil prices," he told The Independent.

[Graeme]

It appears that this year, Birol is more worried about ff subsidies and climate change (see link to shortened version of interview):

The chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has urged the world to slash hundreds of billions of dollars of fossil fuel subsidies or face the prospect of a catastrophic 3.5 degrees Centigrade rise in global temperatures.
“Today $409 billion equivalent of fossil fuels subsidies are in place which encourage developing countries - where the bulk of the energy demand and CO2 emissions come from – [towards a] wasteful use of energy,” Fatih Birol told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

The sum represents a $110 billion increase on the 2009 level.

According to Birol, cutting such subsidies in major non-OECD countries is “the one single policy item” which could help reorient the world towards a trajectory of 2 degrees global warming.

It would also reduce CO2 emissions and help renewable energies such as solar and wind power to get a bigger market share, according to the IEA's World Energy Outlook 2011 report which will be released on 9 November.

Analysis in the report “indicates that the door for a 2 degrees trajectory may be closing if we do not act urgently and boldly,” Birol said.

[Plantagenet]

Its already too late to leave oil before it leaves us. Oil has already peaked and we are on the production plateau.

Soon the global oil supply will start decreasing each year.

All we can do now is try to leave oil simultaneously with oil leaving us.

[Ferretlover]

Its already too late to leave oil before it leaves us. Oil has already peaked and we are on the production plateau.
Soon the global oil supply will start decreasing each year. All we can do now is try to leave oil simultaneously with oil leaving us.

+1, Ain´t that the truth...
Time to Worry: World Oil Production Finishes Six Years of No Growth

...
What the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which is the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy, used to call "total oil production" has now morphed into so-called "total liquids production." It's a tacit admission that conventional oil supplies cannot meet all our needs. But even total liquids production--which includes ethanol, biodiesel and natural gas liquids--has moved up only a paltry 2.6 percent during the entire period from the end of 2005 to today. Hence, the continuing high prices for liquid fuels.

Now, it's not as if high prices haven't sent people looking for more oil and working on more substitutes. The problem is that all of this activity is facing a considerable headwind. It's called depletion. And, as they say in the oil patch, depletion never sleeps. It's going on in every operating well in every country around the clock, 365 days a year. Estimates suggest that the decline in current production capacity might be around 4 percent per year. That means that 4 percent of the current production capacity for oil must be replaced each year just to break even. And, of course, to grow supplies, new production capacity must exceed this amount. But it hasn't, and oil substitutes haven't really grown by any significant amount in the last six years either.

Citizen

[Ferretlover]

By hanging on to what we have and spending yet more FF to get more, we have missed that ole boat.
We should have been working on new technologies while we still had the fuel to get us by until they were up and running and people got used to them/learned to deal with them.
The last nation with any appreciable amount of oil will be a target for the rest of the planet; they will also be left behind in the dust of alternative fuel acquistion.

[Graeme]

FL, Thanks for your contribution. Your response is similar to that announced by the IEA and other climate analysts. The IEA seems less concerned now with PO and more worried about CC. The IEA are now urging nations (esp USA and China) to speed up the transition from ff to renewables and adopt a low-carbon future asap, ideally within five years!

World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.

Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this "lock-in" effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world's foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

guardian

physorg

Here's the response from the EU Climate Commissioner (quoted from physorg link above):

The share of fossil fuels in global primary energy consumption falls from around 81 percent today to 75 percent in 2035, while renewables increase from 13 percent of the mix today to 18 percent.

This scenario already assumes a huge boost in subsidies for renewables, from $64 billion today to $250 billion in 2035.

"One wonders how many more worrying figures the world needs," commented Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's climate commissioner.

The report "shows that the world is heading for a fossil-fuel lock-in. This is another urgent call to move to a low-carbon economy," she said in a statement.

Setting a global price on carbon, slashing fossil fuel subsidies, boosting renewable energy and energy efficiency and revised tax codes are all tools for achieving that end, she added.

[dorlomin]

New built infrastructure lasts 30 years. Its not hard to work out that the new building is not taking into account a world with 430-440ppm in 20 years time and still years to run on a huge amount of infrastructure.

Its a long game and we are playing it badly.