Future scenarios

The strong interaction between energy production and consumption and environmental, social and economic issues is nowadays becoming more and more evident. Due to this interaction, predicting future energy consumptions cannot be isolated from other socio-economic variables. However, due to its very complex nature, many of the important aspects cannot be directly quantified. Considering this complexity, as well as the obvious fact that the future is by definition unknown and cannot be predicted with certainty, particularly over longer periods, strategic planning is most often performed in the form of constructing scenarios about the future. This method of analysing the future is usually termed in the literature as 'scenario planning'. Simply put, scenarios are conjectures as to what might happen in the future based on our past and present experience of the world and on plausible speculation about how these trends may further evolve.

The analysed area included in future scenarios can be global (including the whole World), regional (including a region usually containing parts of two or more countries), national or local. Several global future scenarios have been developed by expert groups, analysing the development in the next 50 to 100 years.

The outcomes of future scenarios are, of course, heavily dependent upon the assumptions taken for the development of a particular scenario. Even though there is a huge diversity of predicted possibilities, all scenarios based on global sustainable development involve an important participation of biomass in satisfying the future energy consumption needs. In the most biomass intensive scenarios, in the year 2050 bioenergy contributes about one third of total global energy demand.

Who knows what will happen in the future?		World primary energy supply by fuel (World Energy Outlook: 2000, IEA)		Shell world energy suply scenario: 2000-2060