bp’s Energy Outlook 2024 uses two scenarios – Current Trajectory and Net Zero – to explore a range of possible outcomes for the global energy system out to 2050.
The wide range of factors that are likely to shape the transition of the global energy system over the next 25 years – for example, policy, technology, societal pressures, financing and geopolitics – mean it is not possible to make meaningful predictions of how the energy system will evolve.
Instead, the Energy Outlook uses scenarios that span a wide range of possible outcomes out to 2050. In doing so, the scenarios inform an understanding of which trends in the energy system are more likely to occur across most plausible outcomes and which ones are more dependent on the speed and shape of the energy transition. That understanding can help shape strategic choices that are more resilient to the many uncertainties surrounding the future of the energy system.
The scenarios consider carbon emissions from energy production and use, most non-energy related industrial processes, and natural gas flaring and methane emissions from the production, transportation, and distribution of fossil fuels and the incomplete combustion of traditional bioenergy (see the Annex for more details). The scenarios use data from 2022 as the base year. The considerable inertia in the energy system means that its evolution over the next few years is unlikely to vary significantly across scenarios.
The pace and extent of decarbonization in Net Zero is broadly aligned with a range of IPCC scenarios consistent with meeting the Paris climate goals. In contrast, the emissions profile of Current Trajectory suggests a much greater likelihood of a significant overshoot relative to those climate goals.
The Energy Outlook scenarios extend only to 2050 and do not model all forms of greenhouse gases or all sectors of the economy. As such, it is not possible to directly infer the increase in global average temperatures in 2100 implied by Current Trajectory and Net Zero.
However, it is possible to make an indirect inference by comparing the cumulative carbon emissions in the two scenarios for the period 2015-50 with the ranges of corresponding carbon trajectories taken from the scenarios included in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability). See the Annex for more details.
The global energy system faces the challenge of moving from the current phase of the energy transition, in which low carbon energy is accelerating, to a second phase in which it is growing sufficiently quickly to reduce the need for fossil fuels.
The longer the global energy system remains on its current pathway, the harder it will be to remain within a 2°C carbon budget, or indeed to meet the Paris climate goals.
Beyond a certain point, the cost and disruption associated with meeting a 2°C carbon budget is likely to increase the longer the shift to a faster decarbonization pathway is delayed. The Delayed and Disorderly scenario assumes that the global energy system moves in line with Current Trajectory for a period, after which sufficient policies and actions are undertaken to begin an accelerated fall in carbon emissions, consistent with meeting a 2°C carbon budget.
It also assumes that there are limits to the pace at which it is possible to decarbonize the global energy system in an ‘orderly’ manner, i.e. without having to resort to policies and actions that have outsized economic and social costs. This maximum pace of ‘orderly’ transition is uncertain and would depend on the specific triggers leading to the decision to pursue a faster transition pathway and on the technologies available to reduce emissions at the time that decision has been taken.
There are different ways in which this maximum pace of ‘orderly’ transition could be approximated.