European energy and CO2 emissions trends to 2020: PRIMES model v.2

The purpose of this article is to present a summary of a consistent European Union (EU) energy and energy-related emissions outlook for the period to 2020. The material presented here is based on quantitative analysis and on a process of communication with and feedback from a number of energy experts and organizations. All the results presented for EU energy trends are based on the PRIMES partial equilibrium model for the European energy system, version 2. The PRIMES model provides simulation of the energy system and the decisions of the agents and the markets, covering in detail several sectors, uses, and technologies. The results of this analysis indicate that the EU will not meet the obligations for greenhouse gas emissions reductions it undertook at Kyoto unless it introduces policy initiatives for the abatement of energyrelated emissions. Although the industrial, tertiary, household, and transportation sectors can all make significant contributions to CO2 emissions reductions, the electricity- and steam-generation sector appears to offer the greatest potential because of its relative flexibility in terms of technology and fuel choice. Finally, when the only criterion for emissions reductions is economic efficiency, our analysis indicates that reduction levels differ significantly among EU countries

Introduction: Controlling Emissions in the Longer Run- The Role of Technology

This part of the volume deals with technology and policy options to tackle the problem of rising emissions in the period to 2010. It was seen in the first part of this volume that, under baseline assumptions, CO2 emission was likely to grow substantially in the period to 2010. Even in Europe emissions were projected to increase by almost 8% above their level of 1990. Yet over the past couple of years there has been a great deal of debate on how to reduce emissions even in the medium term. This debate reached a turning point in the Kyoto Conference on climate change where all developed regions of the world undertook firm commitments and set targets for reductions in CO2 emissions by 2010. The European Union agreed to decrease the CO2 emissions in 2010 by 8% compared to the level of emissions in 1990. This would involve a reduction of nearly 16% when compared to the level of emission projected for that year under baseline assumptions

Carbon removal, fuel cycle shift and efficiency measures: a sectoral view

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCCa 1996) distinguishes between technological options and policy measures. The dividing line between the two is fuzzy because technological options stand behind most policy measures. (The only other major source of emission reductions is consumer behaviour). In this report, we focus on technological measures, but we discuss policies and consumer behaviour where we think it influences our analysis in an important way

Global outlook

The global economic and energy outlook plays a critical part in the analysis and results of this volume. The energy sector is, to a large extent, already operating within a world context and any regional analysis that does not take into account international influences is likely to prove deficient. One extreme illustration of this is the oil market, which is globally integrated. It is simply not possible to examine future oil market trends in the EU without taking into account global supply and demand, which will determine future oil prices. Similar considerations apply in the case of natural gas. European gas prices and demand will depend not only on the developments in countries, like Russia, that supply gas to the EU but also on countries as far afield as China since they are likely competitors as consumers of Russian gas

Scenario impacts on world energy and emissions

This chapter describes the impact of the technological scenarios, which were presented in the previous chapter on the global power generation system. In order facilitate the evaluation of the impacts of the changes in assumptions, the baseline power generation trends are presented firs

Introduction: Global and European Energy and Emissions Outlook

Energy is a key issue that is present in all the sectors of modern economies. The availability of cheap, abundant and safe energy sources is indeed a requisite for sustained economic development in emerging economies. The ways in which it is consumed and used to produce welfare is the matter of several disciplinary fields. Energy technologies are important because energy is crucial in the overall economic system, not only because of the scarcity of the resources (the world energy mix is based on non renewable energy carriers), but also because of the environmental concerns. Indeed, environmental degradation is due, to a large extent, to the effects of energy production, transformation and use