PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

7. COMPETITION IS THE CREATOR AND THE REGULATOR
COMPETITION BETWEEN PRIMARY ENERGY SOURCES
Percentage of all energy
1
0.5
Wood
Coal
0
-0.5
-1
-1.5
-2
Oill
Natural Gas
Nuclear
Solfus
1850 1900 1950 2000 2050
FIGURE 7.6 Data, fits, and projections for the shares of different primary energy
sources consumed worldwide. For nuclear, the dotted straight line is not a
fit but a trajectory suggested by analogy. The futuristic source labeled “Solfus”
may involve solar energy and thermonuclear fusion. The small circles show how
things evolved since 1982 when this graph was first put together, see text. ∗
quite accurate long-range forecasts predicting successfully the decline of
coal and the flattening of oil, many decades ahead of time. The results
are impressive, but I have found that pragmatic businesspersons are
skeptical about this approach. They do not believe one can forget having
seen the full picture. They suspect that some bias, if unconscious, is ingrained
in such exercises. The only criterion accepted unequivocally is
track record, making a forecast, and then waiting until reality proves it
right or wrong.
∗ Adapted from a graph by Cesare Marchetti in “Infrastructures for Movement,” Technological
Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 32, no. 4 (1987): 373–93. Copyright
1986 by Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
The graph originally appeared in Nebojsa Nakicenovic, “Growth to Limits,”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna, 1984).
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