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Oil demand will fall from 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. “Unrealistic,” says the expert in “ECO Talk”.
That’s why the International Energy Agency expects the end of the oil age: The demand for fossil energy sources, i.e. oil, gas and coal, is expected to have peaked by 2030. The International Energy Agency IEA makes this prediction in its latest energy outlook. It assumes that renewable energies will make up almost half of the global electricity mix by 2030. Today, oil, coal and gas still make up a good 80 percent.
«Completely unrealistic,” says the expert. For what reason? The economist and energy expert Cornelia Meyer also believes that Europe and the USA are gradually moving away from fossil fuels – but not the developing countries. “They don’t have the money to build so many charging stations for electric cars so quickly.” The massive increase in air traffic in China, for example, shows: “We cannot avoid oil at the moment.”
By 2050 there will be two billion more people on earth.
Or Africa: “There are 700 million people living in energy poverty, we have to get them out of it, we need all forms of energy.” Away from oil – that will be difficult, especially in view of population growth: “In 2050 we will have 2 billion more people on earth – they will live in Africa or in South Asia,” she says in “ECO Talk”. In other words, in developing regions that would not be able to get away from oil so quickly.
A look at Switzerland: things are moving forward here, says the expert: Switzerland has significantly reduced its dependence on oil. UBS economist Daniel Kalt gives an example: Today, Switzerland still needs around a third to a quarter as much oil as in the 1970s for the economy to grow. “We have become much more efficient in dealing with oil,” says Kalt.
In Switzerland we have become much more efficient in dealing with oil.
Of course, you can also feel it at the pump in Switzerland if the price of oil rises to $95 per barrel. But in Kalt’s opinion, an oil price shock like in the 1970s would be much less serious today than it was back then. “We are no longer equally vulnerable.”
US oil multinationals continue to pour billions into the business: It is the largest deal in the company’s history, which the US oil company Chevron announced one day before the IEA forecast. Chevron wants to take over rival Hess for $53 billion. Days earlier, ExxonMobil, another US oil multinational, had announced a billion-dollar takeover. The two megadeals show that the oil companies are looking for production sites near their homeland in the USA in order to reduce their dependence on oil from near geopolitical hotspots (Russia, Gaza).
And: They want to secure reserves for the next few decades, well beyond 2030. The company leaders don’t believe in the IEA forecast either: they say it openly and they act accordingly. At least the US CEOs. Their European counterparts are under greater public and political pressure to move away from Big Oil and pursue more ambitious climate goals.
Legend: The demand for fossil energy sources such as oil, gas and coal is expected to have peaked by 2030. This is the forecast from the International Energy Agency IEA. IMAGO / Imaginechina Tuchong