Global Energy Scenarios

We present the global energy system scenarios until the year 2050, which were recently developed in collaboration with the World Energy Council (WEC). The WEC/PSI scenarios encompass a coherent set of economic, social and political key drivers, which were quantified with a detailed energy system model. We focus on two scenario storylines: The first scenario (“Jazz”) describes a world with limited government intervention dominated by shorter-term market forces, whereas the second scenario (“Symphony”) considers stronger policy regulations and more focused technology support. The scenarios include assumptions about climate policies and take recent developments into account, for example the advent of cheap shale gas, and the recent developments in prices for PV installation.

Under the different scenario assumptions, we quantify alternative long-term cost-effective configurations of the global energy system by using a multi-regional partial equilibrium model. In an outlook, we investigate the prospects of global energy scenario modelling.