Outlook season offers mixed signals on climate and energy
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New projections of the energy and climate future offer fresh support for conclusions that don't lend themselves to doomer-ism or optimism.
The big picture: It's outlook season!
- Lots of analysts are dropping new estimates of the future energy mix and emissions — and they're worth watching, even if written in pencil.
Driving the news: The latest comes via consultancy and research firm Rystad Energy.
- One topline finding in their energy outlook is that the "most likely pathway" shows a 1.8°C to 2.1°C temperature rise above preindustrial levels.
Threat level: That much warming would still bring lots of harm, but shows progress in avoiding some far more dire outcomes predicted in the not-too-distant past before low-carbon sources became more mainstream.
"The energy transition is not dead. It remains alive and well. On the other hand, what we now see as 'dead' are dystopian climate scenarios," CEO Jarand Rystad writes in the report.
- Rystad finds it "unlikely" that warming will reach 2.5°C.
Yes, but: That's more hopeful than a number of other analysts.
- For instance, Wood Mackenzie's latest outlook earlier this week has a base case of 2.6°C of warming above preindustrial levels.
- "The global push to tackle climate change has slowed," Simon Flowers, Wood Mackenzie's chief analyst, writes in the firm's new energy transition outlook.
What's next: The U.N. will release its updated "emissions gap" analysis before the COP30 summit, which starts Nov. 10.
- Last year's version projected 2.6°C to 3.1°C, with the latter number reflecting nations' existing energy policies.
What we're watching: The U.S. energy mix. New analysis from the research firm BloombergNEF projects future solar, wind and storage.
- It sees far slower growth under the GOP budget law.
- But today's updated outlook is more optimistic for wind and storage than BNEF's projections right after the law passed.
State of play: "Compared with our July 2025 outlook, published about two weeks after [One Big, Beautiful Bill Act] became law, BNEF's total wind, solar and storage forecast is up 13 gigawatts (GW) for 2025-2030 and 42GW for 2031-35," it states.
- Further interest rate cuts expected next year, and power demand growth coupled with tight gas turbine supplies, help counteract the tougher policy landscape a little.
- The firm is now also folding in Treasury Department tax credit implementing policies for the new law.
The bottom line: U.S. renewables are down but not out.
- "The removal of tax credits was a gut-punch to renewable energy, but the industry is fast adapting," Meredith Annex, the firm's head of clean power, tells Axios in a statement.
