The implications of fossil fuel supply constraints on climate change projections: A supply-side analysis

Wang, Jianliang; Feng, Lianyong; Tang, Xu; Bentley, Yongmei; Höök, Mikael

doi:10.1016/j.futures.2016.04.007

Cited by 101 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 80 publications

(96 reference statements)

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“…They found that the highest RCP pathways (RCP6 and RCP8.5) have very low probabilities of being achieved due to fossil fuel limitations. This conclusion was similar to that of Höök and Tang (2013) and Wang et al (2016) who argued that fossil fuel resource scarcity will ultimately be a limiting factor in the twenty-first century for GHG emissions growth.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…The RCPs reported CO 2 (and other GHG) emissions (see the RCP database tntcat.iiasa.ac.at/RcpDb/) but breakdown of which fossil fuels these emissions come from has not been published. The RCPs implicitly assume at least the same resource availability as the SRES scenarios (Wang et al 2016). The underlying values of production of the various fossil fuels that produce the CO 2 of the RCPs were not published in detail in AR5 or in Moss et al (2010).…”

Section: How Does This Relate To Uncertainty In Climate Change?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Limitations of Oil Production to the IPCC Scenarios: The New Realities of US and Global Oil Production

Murray

2016

Biophys Econ Resour Qual

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Many of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report for Emission Scenarios and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) projections (especially RCP 8.5 and 6) project CO 2 emissions due to oil consumption from now to 2100 to be in the range of 32-57 Gb/yr (87-156 mb/d) or (195-349 EJ/yr). World oil production (crude plus condensate) was almost constant from 2002 to 2011 at about 74 ± 1 million barrels per day (mb/d) (US Energy Institute Agency, US EIA). There was an increase in world oil production after January 2011 that was mostly due to a surge of about 6 mb/d in light tight oil (LTO) production in the USA. This increased global oil production to just above 80 mb/d. Meanwhile, production in the rest of the world remained constant. The surge in the USA resulted in a sustained situation where supply was greater than demand globally, and this initiated a crash in the price of oil. The price of oil decreased from about $100 per barrel in mid-2014 to less than $30 per barrel in early 2016. Once the oil price declined, it was further enhanced and sustained by a decrease in demand due to a slowdown in the global economy. Because LTO is expensive to produce and was unprofitable after the price crash for the exploration and production companies, the surge in US production ended in about April 2015. Now, production of LTO in the USA is declining and global oil production is as well. New oil discoveries have reached a 70-year low, which does not bode well for future production. If the present patterns persist, it is unlikely that world oil production will exceed present US EIA oil production values of about 27-29 Gb/yr (equivalent to 75-80 mb/d) or (171-182 EJ/yr). It is unlikely that the demand for oil production required for CO 2 emissions in RCP8.5 and RCP6 will be met. Keywords Oil production Á Light tight oil Á IPCC Á RCP Á SRES

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: How Does This Relate To Uncertainty In Climate Change?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Limitations of Oil Production to the IPCC Scenarios: The New Realities of US and Global Oil Production

Murray

2016

Biophys Econ Resour Qual

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“…Therefore, there was no great need in the past to be concerned with the fossil fuel net energy outputs or EROIs. However, we have now become aware that the EROI, and hence the amount of energy surplus of fossil fuels to society, has changed relatively recently, due to the rapid depletion of high-quality fossil fuels after about the year 2000 (Wang et al 2017). Currently, there are an increasing number of studies analysing this issue (for example, Murphy and Hall 2010;Gupta and Hall 2011;Hall et al 2014).…”

Section: Eroi Analysis For China's Fossil Fuelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A review of physical supply and EROI of fossil fuels in China

et al. 2017

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This paper reviews China's future fossil fuel supply from the perspectives of physical output and net energy output. Comprehensive analyses of physical output of fossil fuels suggest that China's total oil production will likely reach its peak, at about 230 Mt/year (or 9.6 EJ/year), in 2018; its total gas production will peak at around 350 Bcm/year (or 13.6 EJ/year) in 2040, while coal production will peak at about 4400 Mt/year (or 91.9 EJ/year) around 2020 or so. In terms of the forecast production of these fuels, there are significant differences among current studies. These differences can be mainly explained by different ultimately recoverable resources assumptions, the nature of the models used, and differences in the historical production data. Due to the future constraints on fossil fuels production, a large gap is projected to grow between domestic supply and demand, which will need to be met by increasing imports. Net energy analyses show that both coal and oil and gas production show a steady declining trend of EROI (energy return on investment) due to the depletion of shallow-buried coal resources and conventional oil and gas resources, which is generally consistent with the approaching peaks of physical production of fossil fuels. The peaks of fossil fuels production, coupled with the decline in EROI ratios, are likely to challenge the sustainable development of Chinese society unless new abundant energy resources with high EROI values can be found.

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“…Climate change has been seen as one of the major challenges for sustainable development of human society, and anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mainly due to the usage of fossil fuels, have been considered as the dominant cause of the observed change in climate to-date [1]. To address the problem, most of the countries in the world are taking measures to control or reduce their carbon emissions [2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability Assessment of Bioenergy from a Global Perspective: A Review

et al. 2018

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Bioenergy, as a renewable energy resource, is expected to see significant development in the future. However, a key issue that will affect this trend is sustainability of bioenergy. There have been many studies on this topic but mainly focusing on only one or two-dimensions of the issue and also with much of the literature directed at studies of European regions. To help understand the wider scope of bioenergy sustainability, this paper reviews a broad range of current research on the topic and places the literature into a multi-dimensional framework covering the economic, environmental and ecological, social and land-related aspects of bioenergy sustainability, as well as a geographical analysis of the areas for which the studies have been carried out. The review indicates that it is hard to draw an overall conclusion on the sustainability of bioenergy because of limited studies or contradictory results in some respects. In addition, this review shows that crop-based bioenergy and forest bioenergy are seen as the main sources of bioenergy and that most studies discuss the final utilization of bioenergy as being for electricity generation. Finally, research directions for future study are suggested, based on the literature reviewed here.

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The implications of fossil fuel supply constraints on climate change projections: A supply-side analysis

Cited by 101 publications

References 80 publications

Limitations of Oil Production to the IPCC Scenarios: The New Realities of US and Global Oil Production

Limitations of Oil Production to the IPCC Scenarios: The New Realities of US and Global Oil Production

A review of physical supply and EROI of fossil fuels in China

Sustainability Assessment of Bioenergy from a Global Perspective: A Review

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