The first rule of making projections out to 2040 is to recognize the fact that you’ll almost certainly be wrong. After all, think about doing the same thing back in 1992. Would you have predicted this? Somehow, I doubt it; most people didn’t see it coming 24 days ago. But when you’re the International Energy Agency, you have to go out on a limb and peer a quarter-century ahead anyway. The latest World Energy Outlook, published on Tuesday, weighs in at a magisterial 667 pages of detailed analysis and scenarios. I’m going to focus specifically on one aspect: oil supply and demand. One scenario is called “New Policies” — essentially taking governments at their word in terms of commitments to limit greenhouse gas emissions. It isn’t an all-out decarbonization scenario, nor one where no further political efforts happen. It sits between these two and therefore represents something like a […]