OECD/ITF Joint Transport Research Centre Discussion Papers
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- Is continued by :
- International Transport Forum Discussion Papers
The International Transport Forum at the OECD is an intergovernmental organisation with 52 member countries. It acts as a strategic think tank for transport policy and organizes an annual summit of ministers. Our work is underpinned by economic research, statistics collection and policy analysis, often undertaken in collaboration with many of the world's leading research figures in academia, business and government. This series of Discussion Papers is intended to disseminate the International Transport Forum’s research findings rapidly among specialists in the field concerned.
- ISSN: 20708270 (online)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/20708270
Reserve Driven Forecasts for Oil, Gas & Coal and Limits in Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Peak Oil, Peak Gas, Peak Coal and Peak CO2
The increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is coursed by an increasing
use of fossil fuels; natural gas, oil and coal. This has so far resulted in an increase of the global surface temperature of the order of one degree.
In year 2000 IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released 40
emission scenarios that can be seen as images of the future, or alternative futures.
They are neither predictions nor forecasts and actual reserves have not been a
limited factor, just the fossil fuel resource base.
This paper is based on realistic reserve assessments, and CO2 emissions from
resources that cannot be transformed into reserves are not allowed. First we can
conclude that CO2 emission from burning oil and gas are lower then what al the
IPCC scenarios predict, and emission from coal is much lowers then the majority of
the scenarios.
IPCC emission scenarios for the time period 2020 to 2100 should in the future not be
used for climate change predictions. It’s time to use realistic scenarios.
Climate change is current with more change to come, and furthermore, climate
change is an enormous problem facing the planet. However, the world’s
greatest problem is that too many people must share too little energy. In the
current political debate we presumably need to replace the word
“environment” with “energy”, but thankfully the policies required to tackle the
energy problem will greatly benefit the environment.
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