Despite the carbon-cutting push, oil and gas will continue to be a critical part of the world’s energy mix for decades to come, according to an ExxonMobil report, which warns that significant investments are needed to offset declining rates of production or people will live shorter, less fulfilling lives.
Researchers said in the report that they expect oil and natural gas to continue to play a dominant role, providing over half (54 percent) of the world’s energy needs in 2050.
This is despite an unprecedented rise in lower-emission options like wind and solar, which are projected to provide 11 percent of the world’s energy supply in 2050, five times what that share is today.
The Biden administration and others have taken fossil fuels squarely into their crosshairs, with the ExxonMobil report providing a counterpoint to the fight-climate-change-at-all-costs narrative that seems to inform much current energy policymaking.
The issue came to the forefront in dramatic fashion during the recent Republican primary debate, with presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy offering a memorable counterpoint.
“I’m the only candidate on stage who isn’t bought and paid for, so I can say this: the climate change agenda is a hoax,” he said.
Big Changes to Energy Mix
The biggest change in the energy mix in 2050 compared to today is the significant increase in wind and solar, along with a substantial reduction in the use of coal.“Coal will increasingly be displaced by lower-emission sources of electricity production—not just renewables but also natural gas, which has about half the carbon intensity of coal,” the report says, while projecting an 80 percent explosion in the use of electricity by 2050 globally.
While oil use is projected to decline significantly in personal transportation as the electric vehicle push continues to displace internal combustion engines, oil will remain essential for industry and heavy-duty transport, per the report.
Shipping, long-haul trucking, and aviation (all of which underpin economic activity and growth) will continue to be heavily reliant on oil.
“If every new passenger car sold in the world in 2035 were an electric vehicle, oil demand in 2050 would still be 85 million barrels per day, the same as it was around 2010,” the report says, while estimating that natural gas use will soar within the next three decades.
“Natural gas use is projected to increase by more than 20 percent by 2050 given its utility as a reliable and lower-emissions source of fuel for electricity generation, hydrogen production, and heating for both industrial processes and buildings,” the report says.
The researchers predict that, by 2050, per capita GDP will rise by roughly 85 percent globally, driving higher demand for energy.
The critical question is how that growing demand for energy can be met.
“Failing to meet demand would prevent developing nations from achieving their economic goals and their citizens from living longer, more fulfilling lives,” the report states.
One expert who has made a similar point is Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus think-tank and visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
“In the United States, cheap gas from fracking allowed millions to keep warmer with low budgets, saving 12,500 lives each year,” he continued.
More People, More Prosperity, More Demand
The analysts project that the world’s population will grow by around 25 percent between now and 2050, from around 7.8 billion today to 9.7 billion in just under three decades.Just 3 percent of this growth is expected in developed countries such as the United States, with over 25 percent in the Asia Pacific region and around 65 percent in Africa and the Middle East.
Along with population growth, economic expansion around the world is expected to be significant. Between now and 2050, developing countries will see their per-capita GDP more than double, while the world’s overall economic output per person will grow by around 85 percent, driving up energy demand.
“Global demand reaches about 660 quadrillion Btu in 2050, up about 15 percent versus 2021, reflecting a growing population and rising prosperity,” the report states.
A key question is how the growing energy demand will be met.
Wind and solar “hold great promise,” the report’s authors say, predicting that these energy sources will quintuple in use by 2050. Other lower-emission options like hydrogen and nuclear, are also expected to play important roles.
“As lower-emission options grow, we project the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions will decline 25 percent by 2050,” the report says, noting that this is a major shift from the 10 percent increase in emissions over the past decade.
In a nod to the United Nations climate goals of keeping global warming from exceeding 2 degrees C, the report says that “larger reductions are needed” to meet that goal, even though the authors acknowledged that progress in reducing emissions has been “substantial” so far.
“We’re aggressively working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our operations, and our 2030 emission-reduction plans are on track to achieve a 40-50 percent reduction in upstream greenhouse gas intensity, compared to 2016 levels,” Darren Woods, chairman and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil, said in a statement in December 2022.
Given that oil and natural gas are projected to remain a critical component of the world’s energy mix through 2050, the report says “significant” investments are needed in order to offset declining rates of production.
Currently, the natural decline rate of existing oil production is around 7 percent per year, according to the report.
While smaller, the natural decline rate of natural gas remains substantial at around 5 percent per year, according to the report, which also calls for more investment in gas production.
“These decline rates create a significant need for continuous investment just to sustain 2021 production levels,” the report says, while warning that ceasing to invest in oil and gas could mean supplies fall “well short of demand,” both in the near term and in a longer time frame.
‘Panic is a Terrible Adviser’
Regarding the threat of climate change, Mr. Lomborg wrote in his recent op-ed that “global warming will cause costs equivalent to one or two recessions over the rest of this century.”He says that makes it a “real problem but not an end-of-the-world catastrophe that justifies the costliest policies.”
Mr. Lomborg argued that a common-sense approach would be to acknowledge that there are costs to both climate change and carbon-cutting policies.
“We should carefully negotiate a middle pathway where we aim for effective approaches that do the most to reduce damages at a reasonable cost,” he writes.
“To do better on climate, we must resist the misleading, alarmist climate narrative,” Mr. Lomborg continued.
“Panic is a terrible adviser,” he added.
Meanwhile, some energy groups in the United States have expressed concern that, in its fight against global warming, the Biden administration will declare a COVID-19-like emergency for climate.
An emergency declaration on the climate could give the president “vast and unchecked authority to shut down everything from communications to infrastructure,” said Mr. Stewart, who has been a critic of the Biden administration.
The White House press office didn’t respond to a request for comment by the time of publication about whether the administration might be preparing such a declaration.
President Joe Biden and other administration officials have said that the United States and the world are in the midst of a “climate crisis” and have used language describing it as an emergency.
So far, however, President Biden has stopped short of declaring an emergency, although some Democrats and environmental groups have pushed the idea.
