How will the overall energy system evolve from now to 2060?
The Emissions Reduction visualisation allows you to quickly and easily see what impact countries, technologies and sectors may have on carbon dioxide emissions in the decades to come.
The Energy Flows visualisation focuses on the transport, industry and buildings sectors, highlighting the different fuels (from oil to biofuels), sectors (from petrochemicals to residential) and end uses (from water heating to lighting) that will be affected in the years ahead according to the 2DS.
Total emissions include industry process emissions.
End-use energy efficiency also includes avoided transport demand (e.g. through remote communication).
Reductions from electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles are split into an energy efficiency improvement component and a fuel switching component.
Both visualisations use the latest data from ETP 2017.
- The Reference Technology Scenario (RTS) takes into account today’s commitments by countries to limit emissions and improve energy efficiency, including the NDCs pledged under the Paris Agreement. By factoring in these commitments and recent trends, the RTS already represents a major shift from a historical “business as usual” approach with no meaningful climate policy response. The RTS requires significant changes in policy and technologies in the period to 2060 as well as substantial additional cuts in emissions thereafter. These efforts would result in an average temperature increase of 2.7°C by 2100, at which point temperatures are unlikely to have stabilised and would continue to rise.
- The 2°C Scenario (2DS) lays out an energy system pathway and a CO2 emissions trajectory consistent with at least a 50% chance of limiting the average global temperature increase to 2°C by 2100. Annual energy-related CO2 emissions are reduced by 70% from today’s levels by 2060, with cumulative emissions of around 1 170 gigatonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) between 2015 and 2100 (including industrial process emissions). To stay within this range, CO2 emissions from fuel combustion and industrial processes must continue their decline after 2060, and carbon neutrality in the energy system must be reached before 2100. The 2DS continues to be the ETP’s central climate mitigation scenario, recognising that it represents a highly ambitious and challenging transformation of the global energy sector that relies on a substantially strengthened response compared with today’s efforts.
- The Beyond 2°C Scenario (B2DS) explores how far deployment of technologies that are already available or in the innovation pipeline could take us beyond the 2DS. Technology improvements and deployment are pushed to their maximum practicable limits across the energy system in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060 and to stay net zero or below thereafter, without requiring unforeseen technology breakthroughs or limiting economic growth. This “technology push” approach results in cumulative emissions from the energy sector of around 750 GtCO2 between 2015 and 2100, which is consistent with a 50% chance of limiting average future temperature increases to 1.75°C. Energy sector emissions reach net zero around 2060, supported by significant negative emissions through deployment of bioenergy with CCS. The B2DS falls within the Paris Agreement range of ambition, but does not purport to define a specific temperature target for “well below 2°C”.