World Energy Outlook 2006

Reference Scenario. This would require major changes in energy supply and
use. Demand and supply efficiency would need to be further improved and
increased use be made of nuclear and renewables, to levels well beyond those
in the Alternative Policy Scenario. Technologies exist today that could permit
such radical changes over the Outlook period, but there are many barriers to
their deployment, including the following:
� The life span of the existing capital stock limits commercial opportunities
for new plant construction – particularly in OECD countries.
� Even existing highly-efficient technologies have yet to be widely adopted.
� The costs are, in some cases, likely to be considerably higher than those of
established technologies.
Achieving the BAPS goal will, therefore, almost certainly call for new
technologies as well as improvements to those that exist. Of the existing
technologies that are currently under development but not yet commercially
available, CO2 capture and storage (CCS) 3 and second-generation biofuels
seem the most promising.
There are many different possible paths leading to this more sustainable future,
involving a myriad of technology options and fuel choices. A policy approach
that promotes a portfolio of technologies would greatly reduce the risk and
potentially the cost of accelerating technological solutions, because one or more
technologies might fail to make the expected progress. The mix of options
presented here is not necessarily the cheapest, nor the easiest to implement
politically or technically.
So far as emissions reductions are concerned, Pacala and Socolow suggest that
a useful indicator of the value of technical options for emissions reduction is
their capacity to yield 1 Gt of cumulative emissions reductions over the next
50 years (Pacala and Socolow, 2004). A variant of that framework is used here.
We identify six different initiatives, each of which can yield a saving of 1 Gt of
CO2 emissions in 2030. We add a seventh, CO2 capture and storage in power
generation, which we count upon to save 2 Gt, in order to arrive at savings
of 8 Gt beyond those made in the Alternative Policy Scenario in 2030
(Figure 10.2). The initiatives are as follows:
� Increasing savings in electricity demand: This involves increasing
the average efficiency of electricity use by an additional 50% over and above
the level achieved in the Alternative Policy Scenario. Electricity savings
would total 1 815 TWh compared with the Alternative Policy Scenario and
5 730 TWh compared with the Reference Scenario. Those savings would
avoid building close to 200 GW of coal-fired power plants, emitting 1 Gt of
CO2 . Two-thirds of these savings could be achieved in electricity use in the
3. See Box 7.2 and IEA (2004) for a detailed assessment of the status and prospects for CCS.
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© OECD/IEA, 2007