Global demand for natural gas will continue to rise through 2050 under governments’ existing climate policies, an economist for BP said Wednesday.
Spencer Dale, the oil giant’s chief economist, said that while clean energy sources like wind and solar were growing at a rapid pace, they were not growing fast enough to keep up with rising energy consumption in developing countries. As a result, greater supplies of natural gas from regions like Texas will be needed to feed their power grids and industrial sectors.
“It’s relatively easy to decarbonize power markets in the developed world because the growth is so much slower,” Dale said at an event at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday. “If you’re in developing Asia where power demand is growing 5, 6, 7% a year, it’s really hard to grow renewables quickly enough to meet the growth in power demand, never mind to replace fossil fuels.”
The analysis comes as governments worldwide have committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by midcentury to keep the planet from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius. But they have struggled to make the necessary policy changes to reduce emissions to that degree amid political caution and, in many cases, outright opposition over the impact on energy prices.
Under existing policies, global greenhouse gas emission will not begin declining until the late 2020s and by 2050 will still be close to 25 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year — a decline of less than 40% from current levels — according to BP.
Even the oil sector, a big business in Texas facing pressure from the burgeoning electric vehicle industry, would only see a 25% decline in demand from current levels, according to BP’s projections.
The question hanging over this and similar analyses by other oil companies, including Spring-based Exxon Mobil, is whether governments at some point will move more aggressively to counteract climate change amid worsening heat waves, more intense storms and chronic wildfires.
For now, politicians are divided on the need for additional action, with former President Donald Trump mocking President Joe Biden’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promising to increase fossil fuel development in the United States.
Even under current U.S. climate policies, emissions here would still total close to 3 gigatons a year by 2050, roughly half of current levels, according to BP’s analysis.
