Oct. 4-5, 2022 — CarrZee: This note from OPEC seems to be a fairly shameless grab for climate-action money (and … why not, everyone else is doing it?).

OPEC plus meets today (Wednesday) and is considering cuts of as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day to stop prices falling. (Brent crude is down less than 1% today after a mini rebound to $92 a barrel over the past 2 days.)

Ironically, higher oil will help spur the switch to cleaner, cheaper forms of energy.

What I find fascinating is how natural-gas demand falls in the scenario below so much faster than oil (even though natgas is a cleaner fuel at the point where it is burned).

Self interest, eh? What am I missing? message me at mathew@carrzee.net

Reality in 2045 will probably be some middle ground: between this scenario below and the IEA’s most ambitious decarbonization scenario, which focuses more on renewables.

Unedited excerpt of this (emphasis added):

An alternative scenario has been compared by the OPEC Secretariat to
the projections of the Reference Case of the World Oil Outlook, having a distinct
narrative of climate change policies and mitigation ambitions compatible with the
Paris Agreement long-term goals.

This relates to the critical role of technology options that could lead to win-win solutions with environmental and socio-economic benefits.

It provides an alternative emissions reduction pathway that focuses on the greater
implementation of the CCS (carbon capture and storage) technologies in industrial
sectors, strong investment in hydrogen supply networks and the increasing adoption
of the CCE (circular carbon economy) framework across the global economy.

Compared to the Reference Case, under the alternative scenario, global energyrelated CO2 emissions are reduced by about 63% in 2045, demand for coal is 58% lower – primarily due to an accelerated phase-out of unabated power generation from coal in countries such as China, India and South Africa – demand for gas is reduced by 37%, and oil demand is 16% lower.

‘Overall, there remains substantial demand for fossil fuels, accounting for about 55% of total primary energy demand in 2045‘

Analysis shows that the adverse impacts of climate mitigation response measures
could be significantly alleviated if innovative approaches and advanced technology
options such as those considered in the alternative scenario are implemented at scale.

CCS is an environmentally sound technology, which can allow countries to maintain
the diversity of energy supply.

Hydrogen can also be a key energy carrier for decarbonisation in various hard-to-abate sectors, whereas the CCE framework encourages countries to use all technologies, forms of energy and mitigation opportunities.

Source doc