Browse by: "2015"

The precipitous fall in oil prices, continued geopolitical instability and the ongoing global climate negotiations are witness to the dynamic nature of energy markets. In a time of so much uncertainty, understanding the implications of the shifting energy landscape for economic and environmental goals and for energy security is vital. The World Energy Outlook 2015 (WEO-2015) will present updated projections for the evolution of the global energy system to 2040, based on the latest data and market developments, as well as detailed insights on the prospects for fossil fuels, renewables, the power sector and energy efficiency and analysis on trends in CO2 emissions and fossil-fuel and renewable energy subsidies.

In addition, the WEO-2015 covers in-depth analysis on several topical issues:
 
A lower oil price future? The decline in oil prices and changed market conditions has prompted a broad debate over how and when the oil market will re-balance. This analysis will examine the implications for markets, policies, investment, the fuel mix and emissions if oil prices stay lower for longer.

India’s energy outlook: How India’s energy sector develops over the coming decades will have profound implications both for the country’s own prospects and for the global energy system as a whole. With new impetus behind efforts to upgrade the country’s energy supply, this comprehensive, in-depth analysis will assess the multiple challenges and opportunities facing India as it develops the resources and infrastructure to meet rapidly rising energy demand.

Renewables and energy efficiency: In the run-up to COP21, the Outlook will provide a report on the competitive position of fast-growing renewable energy technologies in different markets, how this evolves and what implications this might have for policy; the analysis also tracks for the first time the coverage of energy use by efficiency policies around the world and the ways in which product design, recycling and reuse (“material efficiency”) can contribute to energy savings.

Unconventional gas: In addition to an update on the opportunities and challenges that face the development of unconventional gas globally, analysis will focus on the prospects for unconventional gas in China and how this might affect China’s energy outlook as well as regional and global balances.

Chinese NOCs first ventured overseas to invest in oil and gas production more than 20 years ago. Today, they have emerged to become international players with activities spreading across more than 40 countries and producing 2.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (mboe/d) of oil and gas outside of China. Chinese companies have contributed much-needed investments in global oil and gas production.

This report provides an update on overseas activity by China’s National Oil Companies (NOCs) between 2011 and 2013 and is a follow-up publication of IEA’s previous report in 2011, Overseas Investments by Chinese National Oil Companies: Assessing the Drivers and Impacts. It aims to examine the trends exhibited by investments made by Chinese NOCs and the risks and challenges they face today and raised the question if China’s long standing non-interference foreign policy could still be valid given China’s worldwide commercial interests, including those of the NOCs’.

A combination of rapidly increasing energy demand and fuel imports plus growing concern about economic and environmental consequences is generating growing calls for effective and thorough energy governance in India. Numerous policy reforms over the past 20 years have shifted the country’s energy sector from a state-dominated system towards one that is based on market principles. However, with the reform process left unfinished, India now finds itself trapped halfway along the transition to an open and well-performing energy sector.

India suffered from the largest power outage ever in late July 2012, affecting nearly half of the population. While this incident highlights the importance of modern and smart energy systems, it indicates that the country is increasingly unable to deliver a secure supply of energy to its population, a quarter of which still lacks access to electricity.
 
Understanding Energy Challenges in India aims to provide an informative and holistic understanding of India’s energy sector to stakeholders in India as well as the broad public.

The publication explores in detail the policies, players and issues of the country’s power, coal, oil and gas, renewables and nuclear sectors. It also highlights the key challenges India faces, challenges that must be resolved for the evolution of the fast-growing country’s energy sector towards a sustainable energy future and eventually critical for the prospects of the Indian and global economies.

Current trends in energy supply and use are unsustainable – economically, environmentally and socially. Without decisive action, energy-related greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions would lead to considerable climate degradation with an average 6°C global warming. We can and must change the path we are now on; sustainable and low-carbon energy technologies will play a crucial role in the energy revolution required to make this change happen. Energy Efficiency, many types of renewable energy, carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear power and new transport technologies will all require widespread deployment if we are to achieve a global energy-related CO2 target in 2050 of 50% below current levels and limit global temperature rise by 2050 to 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

Wind is the most advanced of the "new" renewable energy technologies and was the subject of one of the first roadmaps produced by the IEA, in 2009. Since then, the development and deployment of wind power has been a rare good news story in the deployment of low-carbon technology deployment.

Current trends in energy supply and use are unsustainable – economically, environmentally and socially. Without decisive action, energy-related greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions would lead to considerable climate degradation with an average 6°C global warming. We can and must change the path we are now on; sustainable and low-carbon energy technologies will play a crucial role in the energy revolution required to make this change happen. Energy Efficiency, many types of renewable energy, carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear power and new transport technologies will all require widespread deployment if we are to achieve a global energy-related CO2 target in 2050 of 50% below current levels and limit global temperature rise by 2050 to 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

Energy is a critical input into the production and consumption patterns that support economic and social wellbeing. However, many forms of energy use contribute to the environmental and climate challenges societies face today. Taxation is a key tool by which governments can influence energy use to contain its environmental impacts. This report provides a systematic analysis of the structure and level of energy taxes in OECD and selected other countries; together, they cover 80% of global energy use.

This report builds on the 2013 edition of Taxing Energy Use, expanding the geographic coverage of the 2013 data set to include Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa. The report describes energy use, taxation and pricing in these countries and presents detailed graphical profiles of the structure of energy use and taxation for each.

The analysis reveals large differences in the taxation of energy across countries, although common patterns emerge. Transport taxes are considerably higher than in other sectors, where fuels that cause considerable harm for the environment and human health are often taxed at very low – or zero – rates. With few exceptions, countries' energy taxes do not harness the full power of taxes to reduce pollution and combat climate change.

Renewables Information provides a comprehensive review of historical and current market trends in OECD countries, including 2014 provisional data. It provides an overview of the development of renewables and waste in the world over the 1990 to 2013 period. A greater focus is given to the OECD countries with a review of electricity generation and capacity from renewable and waste energy sources, including detailed tables. However, an overview of developments in the world and OECD renewable and waste market is also presented. The publication encompasses energy indicators, generating capacity, electricity and heat production from renewable and waste sources, as well as production and consumption of renewables and waste.

Renewables Information is one of a series of annual IEA statistical publications on major energy sources; other reports are Coal Information, Electricity Information, Natural Gas Information and Oil Information.

Oil Information is a comprehensive reference book on current developments in oil supply and demand. The first part of this publication contains key data on world production, trade, prices and consumption of major oil product groups, with time series back to the early 1970s.

The second part gives a more detailed and comprehensive picture of oil supply, demand, trade, production and consumption by end-user for each OECD country individually and for the OECD regions. Trade data are reported extensively by origin and destination.

Oil Information is one of a series of annual IEA statistical publications on major energy sources; other reports are Coal Information, Electricity Information, Natural Gas Information and Renewables Information.

This publication is concerned with all policies that directly support the production or consumption of fossil fuels in OECD countries and in a selection of partner economies. It provides a useful complement to the online OECD database that identifies and estimates direct budgetary transfers and tax expenditures benefitting fossil fuels, and from which it derives summary results and indicators on support to fossil fuels, as well as policy recommendations.

This report emphasises the problems that fossil-fuel subsidies cause in the context of broader policy efforts for mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions, and reviews the various reform initiatives that have already been taken at the international level (G-20, APEC, etc.). In addition, it presents the coverage, method and data sources used for constructing the online database, and further discusses caveats and data interpretation.

Natural Gas Information is a detailed reference work on gas supply and demand covering not only OECD countries but also the rest of the world. This publication contains essential information on LNG and pipeline trade, gas reserves, storage capacity and prices.

The main part of the book, however, concentrates on OECD countries, showing a detailed supply and demand balance for each country and for the three OECD regions: Americas, Asia-Oceania and Europe, as well as a breakdown of gas consumption by end user. Import and export data are reported by source and destination.

Natural Gas Information is one of a series of annual IEA statistical publication on major energy sources; other reports are Coal Information, Electricity Information, Oil Information and Renewables Information.

Energy efficiency improvements over the last 25 years saved a cumulative USD 5.7 trillion in energy expenditures. This virtual supply of energy generates multiple benefits for governments, businesses and households, including greater energy security from reduced dependence on energy imports and billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Strengthening our understanding of the energy efficiency market and the prospects over the medium term is becoming increasingly important. The 2015 Energy Efficiency Market Report (EEMR) evaluates the impact of energy efficiency in the energy system and assesses the scale and outlook for further energy efficiency investment using detailed country-by-country energy efficiency indicator data and IEA expertise.

This year’s report includes an in-depth look into the buildings energy efficiency market and the electricity sector. Energy efficiency investments in the buildings sector totalled between USD 90 billion in 2014. In the electricity sector, energy efficiency has proved critical in flattening electricity consumption in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries, driving utilities to adapt their business models.

Promoting and expanding energy efficiency markets is a worldwide phenomenon, and EEMR 2015 presents a number of case studies at the national, state and municipal level. These include examinations of Latin America’s two largest economies, Brazil and Mexico, which are looking to efficiency to boost productivity and social development. Energy-exporting countries like Saudi Arabia and the Russian Federation are also increasingly turning to efficiency to increase exports and reduce the costs of growing domestic energy consumption. In addition to national governments, major urban areas such as Tokyo, Seoul and Paris are increasingly enabling energy efficiency investment.
 

The recent oil market sell‑off, brought on by deep imbalances after years of record-high prices, will likely prove a milestone in the history of oil.  However prices eventually evolve, markets may never be the same.  This edition of the Medium-Term Oil Market Report sizes up the magnitude of this transformation so far and sketches the oil landscape at the 2020 horizon.

It is not just oil price signals that have changed, but also the market’s responsiveness to them. On the supply side, this Report’s forecast reflects not just lower price assumptions, but also the high price-sensitivity of US light tight oil compared to conventional crude, as well as OPEC’s embrace of market forces in late 2014 in a bid for market share.  On the demand front, it shows how the response to lower prices will differ in a low-growth, deflationary environment compared to a higher-growth one.

Not all factors can be easily predicted. Much hangs on the outcome of talks between Iran and the “P5+1” on that of Islamist violence in oil-producing countries, and on future relations between Russia and the West. Such geopolitical risk factors are themselves a defining feature of the oil market for the medium term.

As in previous editions, this Report also offers key projections of global refining capacity, crude trade flows and product supply, this year with special focus on the impact of changing bunker fuel legislation.

Rarely has the oil market faced changes as sweeping as today. That makes the insights from the IEA 2015 Medium-Term Oil Market Report all the more timely and valuable.

Global natural gas demand remained weak in 2014, falling well below its ten-year average. High prices for gas in the past two years undermined its competitiveness, bringing to light a harsh reality: in a world of cheap coal and falling costs for renewables, gas has laboured to compete. Although Asia has been regarded as an engine of future gas demand growth, the fuel has struggled to expand its share of the market in many parts of the region. This has raised questions over the viability of gas as an attractive strategic option across Asia.

The context for gas markets is changing rapidly, however. Falling oil prices have resulted in much lower gas prices in many parts of the word. As a result, gas demand is enjoying the tailwind of substantial price drops while the upstream sector is suffering amid large capital expenditure cuts. The interaction of these opposing effects on gas markets is examined in the IEA Medium-Term Gas Market Report 2015, which provides a detailed analysis of global demand, supply and trade developments through 2020. The impact on global gas markets of Russia’s strategic shift in its gas export policy and the rising tide of liquefied natural gas supplies are given careful consideration. Two special insights also feature in this report. The first analyses the progress Europe has made in strengthening its gas infrastructure since 2010 and the major bottlenecks that still remain in enhancing the security of supply in the region. The second takes a close look at reforms to the gas and electricity sector in Mexico, investigating their impacts on North American gas markets.

What are the channels for investment in sustainable energy infrastructure by institutional investors (e.g. pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds) and what factors influence investment decisions? What key policy levers and risk mitigants can governments use to facilitate these types of investments? What emerging channels (such as green bonds, YieldCos and direct project investment) hold significant promise for scaling up institutional investment?

This report develops a framework that classifies investments according to different types of financing instruments and investment funds, and highlights the risk mitigants and transaction enablers that intermediaries (such as public green investment banks and other public financial institutions) can use to mobilise institutionally held capital. This framework can also be used to identify where investments are or are not flowing, and focus attention on how governments can support the development of potentially promising investment channels and consider policy interventionsthat can make institutional investment in sustainable energy infrastructure more likely.