The concept of peak oil, once rejected by official energy analysts, has been confirmed by the International Energy Agency’s 2010 World Energy Outlook to 2035.
It says we have already reached the critical point.
Peak oil says that production of crude from conventional sources will reach a record and then start to decline because new oil field finds and new technology can’t keep up with the number of exhausted fields.
According to the IEA, production from traditional sources reached an all time high of 70 million barrels per day in 2006 and will never exceed that, although it will hover around 68 to 69 million barrels per day by 2020.
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Oil production will continue to grow thanks to unconventional sources such as Alberta’s oilsands, but it will cost more, averaging $113 per barrel by 2035.
This will largely keep pace with the growing global demand for energy, driven almost exclusively by the developing world, especially China. World primary energy demand is set to increase by 36 percent between 2008 and 2035.
However, crude oil does not meet all the need for transportation fuel, and biofuel production continues to grow in the IEA’s forecast.
Global biofuel use increases from the equivalent of one million barrels per day now to 4.4 million barrels by 2035. IEA predicts biofuel will meet about eight percent of road transport fuel by 2035, up from three percent now.
The IEA also sees huge increases in the production and consumption of natural gas and renewable and nuclear power to meet energy growth beyond transportation needs.
However, it warns that meeting the Copenhagen Accord’s goal of limiting global temperature increase to 2 C would require a more far-reaching transformation of the global energy system, implying an even greater shift to nuclear and renewable energy and a huge shift to advanced hybrid and electric vehicles.
It is unlikely that governments will have the will or the popular support to undertake this costly energy system transformation, but they will continue to push along at a modest pace.
For prairie farmers, this means they can expect more of their crops to be turned into fuel, more wind turbines on their land and more energy companies interested in exploring for shale and coal-bed natural gas on their farmland.
