Scenarios

What if…?
We live in a time of increasing volatility and extraordinary changes, driven by new uncertainties and ambiguous value systems. The financial crisis, the technological shift from conventional to unconventional resources, shifting geopolitics, climate change and the likely future carbon price, the changing water footprint and its impact on the energy value chain, the urbanisation trend and new forms of mobility, competing value systems, armed conflict and ideological extremism … how will all these issues affect our future energy system and what will be the critical drivers to watch?

Drawing on the wisdom and experience of its global membership to develop a small set of distinct but consistent scenarios - "plausible stories of pathways into the future" - the World Energy Council, in the interest of our sustainable energy future, aims to help decision-makers test the robustness of their own assumptions and to validate policies and strategies. To this end, the World Energy Council has launched a new energy scenarios project this year. A White Paper ( PDF File, 453KB) was released in the 2010 Montreal Congress by the Scenarios team, who will produce a final report in the next two years with interim reports along the way.