(via CBS – Money Watch)

The way oil giant Exxon Mobil (XOM) sees it, the global energy landscape won’t be radically different in 2040 than it is today.

Oil and gas will remain king, accounting for an even slightly larger share of the energy supply. Coal will fall behind natural gas to become the third-largest source of energy.

Exxon forecasts that emerging renewables such as solar and wind power will triple but remain small — just 4 percent of the world’s energy. And carbon emissions will continue rising until around 2030, when cuts in industrialized nations gain traction lead an overall reduction.

…

Energy researcher Jonathan Koomey of Stanford University called the Exxon emissions forecast “pretty typical of fossil-fuel industry and government forecasts,” which he said fail to consider the implications of meeting climate-change goals. At Paris, nearly 200 nations vowed to limit global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with pre-industrial levels.

Koomey said Exxon’s model looks like a “magic wand” scenario in which we don’t do much to address climate change for a couple more decades and count on the “speculative” notion that we will somehow develop and scale up technology to reduce carbon in later years.

Read More