National Petroleum Council (NPC) study of global energy

[Hans De Keulenaer]

Hard truths or soft concessions?

The U.S. National Petroleum Council recently published a major new report: 'Facing the Hard Truths about Energy: a Comprehensive View to 2030 of Global Oil and Natural Gas'.

It doesn't come as a surprise that the peak-oil guys of APSO-USA (Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas) are not impressed. In the article: 'National Petroleum Council report comes up a dry hole' in the Energy Bulletin, they state that the NPC report doesn't meet the promise of its title. A more interesting, close reading of the NPC report was done by Jerome a Paris, also in the Energy Bulletin.

A breakthrough in the NPC vision

Jerome a Paris sees two reasons why the report can be called a breakthrough in the vision of the NPC:

• The NPC for the first time acknowledges that there is an increasing tension on the supply side of oil and natural gas , which can 'create significant challenges to meeting projected energy demand'. Though they stress the fact that 'the world is not running out of energy resources', they do agree for the first time with the peak-oil advocates that 'the age of cheap oil is gone'.
  
• Though the NPC still does not acknowledge the reality of climate change, they see carbon emission reductions as an inescapable political reality : 'Policies aimed at curbing CO2 emissions will alter the energy mix'. One word — 'will' – essentially means that they concede defeat.

The seventh truth is missing

But as Jerome a Paris mentions, the NPC report is also deeply disappointing on one point: it does not see energy savings and demand reduction as priorities; in fact it does not even mention them (it only talks – very apprehensively – about the required 'reduction in demand growth' as a side effect of carbon emission policies). The only real solution the NPC report is proposing to meet the challenges is 'an expansion of all economic energy sources, including coal, nuclear, renewables, and unconventional oil and gas'.

This last comment means that the NPC is overlooking a seventh hard truth: that the whole world cannot start consuming the same amount of energy per capita as the U.S. is consuming today. It would simply be impossible to supply that amount of energy for environmental, technical, and economic reasons.

References

• Executive Summary of the NPC report 'Facing the Hard Truths about Energy: a Comprehensive View to 2030 of Global Oil and Natural Gas'
• Article '"Hard Truths" about global energy detailed in new NPC study" in the Energy Bulletin
• Article 'Facing the Hard Truths about energy – the NPC report, commented' in the Energy Bulletin
• Article 'National Petroleum Council report comes up a dry hole' in the Energy Bulletin
• Article 'The National Petroleum Council Report' in The Oil Drum