EMF OP 49: Projecting Energy Trends Into the New Century

Well before the 1973 oil priceshock, analysts frequently forecasted future energy market conditions(e.g. see Putnam 1953 and Schurr and Netschert 1960). Today the U.S.Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the International EnergyAgency (IEA) routinely report energy outlooks based upon evolvingtechnology, economics, and policy assumptions. We will refer to suchsystems as energy projection frameworks. In addition, many energy-basedmodels have been recast to help analysts project long-term energypatterns and their influence on global climate change. We will refer tothese systems as integrated assessment (IA) models (Weyant 1999). Thisarticle briefly discusses the more readily available and routinelyproduced energy projections from the first group of models andhighlights their most recently available estimates. It will focus onthe underlying energy trends to provide a perspective on futureemissions growth but will not directly examine the environmentalimplications of these energy projections.