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The implications of fossil fuel supply constraints on climate change projections: a supply-side analysis

  • Jianliang Wang
    ,
  • Lianyong Feng
    ,
  • Xu Tang
    ,
  • Yongmei Bentley
    ,
  • Mikael Höök
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Open access

Sustainable Development Goals

  • SDG 13 - Climate Action
    SDG 13 Climate Action

Abstract

Climate projections are based on emission scenarios. The emission scenarios used by the IPCC and by mainstream climate scientists are largely derived from the predicted demand for fossil fuels, and in our view take insufficient consideration of the constrained emissions that are likely due to the depletion of these fuels. This paper, by contrast, takes a supply-side view of CO emission, and generates two supply-driven emission scenarios based on a comprehensive investigation of likely long-term pathways of fossil fuel production drawn from peer-reviewed literature published since 2000. The potential rapid increases in the supply of the non-conventional fossil fuels are also investigated. Climate projections calculated in this paper indicate that the future atmospheric CO concentration will not exceed 610ppm in this century; and that the increase in global surface temperature will be lower than 2.6°C compared to pre-industrial level even if there is a significant increase in the production of non-conventional fossil fuels. Our results indicate therefore that the IPCC's climate projections overestimate the upper-bound of climate change. Furthermore, this paper shows that different production pathways of fossil fuels use, and different climate models, are the two main reasons for the significant differences in current literature on the topic.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 58-72 (15 pages)

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Futures (Volume 86)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 17/05/2016

Publication status

Published - 17/05/2016

ISSN

0016-3287

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/621923
  • Scopus: 84971621255

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