Strategic Issues in Global Energy Security: Global Energy Strategy to 2050

Energy supply worldwide has hitherto centred around affordability and security of supply, with the aspiration to provide light, heat, cooling, communications and transportation for as many people as possible.

To these factors a third imperative has arrived in the form of the low carbon agenda. This is in response to evidence of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions, and now has international sanction in the form of UN protocols, regional legislation and national carbon targets.

This three way policy structure has been dubbed the ‘Trilemma’, a phrase first coined by international energy company Eon, and reconciling affordability, security and the carbon agenda is a message which informs this report.

While economies worldwide have to find mechanisms and technologies which meet these three not always complementary aims, energy policy must also be played out through the prism of growing populations which will to an extent cancel out gains made by more efficient energy production.

Key features of this report

• Identifying the Trilemma and key pillars of energy policy
• Examining the key technologies deployed in present and future energy generation up to 2050
• Regional energy issues in key markets worldwide, both mature and emerging
• Statistical breakdown of the global energy mix
• Identification of threats to energy security and chokepoints which could threaten energy security

Scope of this report

• Achieve a quick and comprehensive understanding of global electricity market trends
• Realize up to date competitive intelligence through an examination of key energy markets
• Assess how energy markets may develop and how different geographic and economic issues will change the way they develop in different places

Key Market Issues

• Affordability : Countries worldwide need to provide energy to their citizens at a price they can afford . Providing 100 % access to electricity is no use if the technologies which deliver it are too expensive.
• Threats to security : While weather conditions, mechanical breakdown, economic conditions and commodity price volatility can all affect security of supply, so can geopolitical issues, ‘resource nationalism’ and asymetrical threats such as terrorism and piracy.
• Competing technologies: In terms of generating technologies traditional high carbon fossil fuels currently dominate, but the need to ‘decarbonise’ energy supply in the face of global warming will lead to a mix of energy sources including nuclear and renewables

Key findings from this report

• Energy markets of the future will have to address low carbon as well as affordability and security issues
• A diverse energy mix will probably be the most secure way to assure energy policy objectives are met
• Governments will find that as they progress in terms of extending access to energy they will battle against growing populations
• While renewables and low carbon energy is seen by many as the future, fossil fuels are going to continue to dominate in the medium term
• Shale gas could well be a ‘wild card’ in terms of its impact on world energy markets, as has already been seen in the US

Key questions answered

• How can the low carbon agenda be reconciled with affordability and security ?
• What are the energy generation technologies available now and on to 2050 ?
• Ways in which different mature and emerging energy economies differ ?
• How energy supply will meet a 50 % rise in global population by 2050 ?
• Which scenarios are likely to evolve to meet the world’s low carbon energy requirements by 2050