A new World Energy Technology Outlook 2050 study published by the EU Commission demonstrates the need for radical change in world’s energy mix to face the double challenges of energy security and climate change. Download the brand new 168 pages report here.
The Commission’s Research Directorate presented the “World Energy Technology Outlook 2050 as background to the adoption of its comprehensive new energy/climate change package on 10 January. The report is full of background figures, facts and infographics like this one:

The study predicts the development of the world’s energy system to 2050 using three different scenarios:

• A “reference” (or ‘business-as-usual’) scenario with moderate climate-change policies and short-term energy production constraints
• A “carbon constraint” scenario with stronger climate-change policies
• A hydrogen scenario, which is a variation on the “carbon constraint” scenario but predicting more hydrogen technology breakthroughs.

It is the second WETO report following the first one, which was published in 2003. the new study shows comparitively remarkable differences in results. The WETO 2050 report is also more pessimistic than the International Energy Agency’s “World Energy Outlook 2006″