• Energy Research

Abstract China is vigorously promoting the development of its unconventional gas resources because natural gas is viewed as a lower-carbon energy source and because China has relatively little conventional natural gas supply. In this paper, we first evaluate how much unconventional gas might be available based on an analysis of technically recoverable resources for three types of unconventional gas resources: shale gas, coalbed methane and tight gas. We then develop three alternative scenarios of how this extraction might proceed, using the Geologic Resources Supply Demand Model. Based on our analysis, the medium scenario, which we would consider to be our best estimate, shows a resource peak of 176.1 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2068. Depending on economic conditions and advance in extraction techniques, production could vary greatly from this. If economic conditions are adverse, unconventional natural gas production could perhaps be as low as 70.1 bcm, peaking in 2021. Under the extremely optimistic assumption that all of the resources that appear to be technologically available can actually be recovered, unconventional production could amount to as much as 469.7 bcm, with peak production in 2069. Even if this high scenario is achieved, China’s total gas production will only be sufficient to meet China’s lowest demand forecast. If production instead matches our best estimate, significant amounts of natural gas imports are likely to be needed.

Detailed projections of world fossil fuel production including unconventional sources were created by country and fuel type to estimate possible future fossil fuel production. Four critical countries (China, USA, Canada and Australia) were examined in detail with projections made on the state/province level. Ultimately Recoverable Resources (URR) for fossil fuels were estimated for three scenarios: Low = 48.4 ZJ, Best Guess (BG) = 75.7 ZJ, High = 121.5 ZJ. The scenarios were developed using Geologic Resources Supply-Demand Model (GeRS-DeMo). The Low and Best Guess (BG) scenarios suggest that world fossil fuel production may peak before 2025 and decline rapidly thereafter. The High scenario indicates that fossil fuels may have a strong growth till 2025 followed by a plateau lasting approximately 50 years before declining. All three scenarios suggest that world coal production may peak before 2025 due to peaking Chinese production and that only natural gas could have strong growth in the future. In addition, by converting the fossil fuel projections to greenhouse gas emissions, the projections were compared to IPCC scenarios which indicated that based on current estimates of URR there are insufficient fossil fuels to deliver the higher emission IPCC scenarios A1Fl and RCP8.5.

Oil sands, as unconventional oil, are so essential to both Canada and the world that special attention should be paid to their extraction status, especially their energy efficiency. One of the most commonly used methods to evaluate energy efficiency is the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) analysis. This paper focuses on EROI analysis for both in situ oil sands and mining oil sands over the period of 2009 to 2015. This time period represents an extension to periods previously considered by other analyses. An extended Input-Output model is used to quantify indirect energy input, which has been ignored by previous analyses of oil sands extraction. Results of this paper show that EROI of both mining oil sands (range of value: 3.9–8) and in situ oil sands (range of value: 3.2–5.4) display an upward trend over the past 7 years; EROI of mining oil sands is generally higher, but is more fluctuating than the EROI of in situ oil sands. Compared with EROI of other hydrocarbons, the EROI of oil sands is still quite low, despite the fact that it is increasing gradually.

Abstract Low oil prices under the influence of economic structure transformation and slow economic growth have hit the existing markets of traditional big oil suppliers and upgraded the conflict of oil production capacity and interest between OPEC producers and other big oil supplier countries such as the USA and Russia. Forecasting global oil production is significant for all countries for energy strategy planning, although many past forecasts have later been proved to be very seriously incorrect. In this paper, the original generalized Weng model is expanded to a multi-cycle generalized Weng model to better reflect the multi-cycle phenomena caused by political, economic and technological factors. This is used to forecast global oil production based on parameter selection from a large sample, depletion rate of remaining resources, constraints on oil reserves and cycle number determination. This research suggests that the world will reach its peak oil production in 2022, at about 4340 × 106 tonnes. China needs to plan for oil import diversity, a domestic oil production structure based on the supply pattern of large oil suppliers worldwide and the oil demand for China’s own development.

Abstract In order to achieve energy consumption targets, and subsequently reduce carbon emissions, China is working on energy strategies and policies aimed at actively increasing the consumption of natural gas—the lowest carbon energy of the fossil fuels, and to enhance the proportion of gas in total primary energy consumption. To do this, it is a necessary prerequisite that China must have access to adequate gas resources and production to meet demand. This paper shows that the availability of domestic gas resources are overestimated by China's authorities due to differences in classification and definitions of gas resources/reserves between China and those accepted internationally. Based on official gas resource figures, China's gas production remains low with respect to the projected demand, and will only be 164.6 bcm in 2020, far lower than the 375 bcm of forecast demand. The gap between gas production and demand will reach 210.4 bcm by 2020. Existing plans for the importation of gas and the development of unconventional gas will not close this gap in the next 10 years, and this situation will therefore present a severe challenge to China's gas security, achievement of targets in improving energy consumption structure and reducing carbon emissions.

This paper introduces two typical multicyclic models: the Hubbert model and the Generalized Weng model. The model-solving process of the two is expounded, and it provides the basis for an empirical analysis of the world’s conventional oil production. The results for both show that the world’s conventional oil (crude þNGLs) production will reach its peak in 2011 with a production of 30 billion barrels (Gb). In addition, the forecasting effects of these two models, given the same URR are compared, and the intrinsic characteristics of these two models are analyzed. This demonstrates that for specific criteria the multicyclic Generalized Weng model is an improvement on the multicyclic Hubbert model. Finally, based upon the resultant forecast for the world’s conventional oil, some suggestions are proposed for China’s policy makers.

Bioenergy, as a renewable energy resource, is expected to see significant development in the future. However, a key issue that will affect this trend is sustainability of bioenergy. There have been many studies on this topic but mainly focusing on only one or two-dimensions of the issue and also with much of the literature directed at studies of European regions. To help understand the wider scope of bioenergy sustainability, this paper reviews a broad range of current research on the topic and places the literature into a multi-dimensional framework covering the economic, environmental and ecological, social and land-related aspects of bioenergy sustainability, as well as a geographical analysis of the areas for which the studies have been carried out. The review indicates that it is hard to draw an overall conclusion on the sustainability of bioenergy because of limited studies or contradictory results in some respects. In addition, this review shows that crop-based bioenergy and forest bioenergy are seen as the main sources of bioenergy and that most studies discuss the final utilization of bioenergy as being for electricity generation. Finally, research directions for future study are suggested, based on the literature reviewed here.

India’s coal demand is forecast to increase at a rapid pace in the future due to the country’s economic and population growth. Analyzing the scope for future production of India’s domestic coal resources, therefore, plays a vital role in the country’s development of sound energy policies. This paper presents a quantitative scenario analysis of India’s potential future coal production by using a negatively skewed curve-fitting model and a range of estimates of the country’s ultimately recoverable resources (URR) of coal. The results show that the resource base is sufficient for India’s coal production to keep increasing over the next few decades, to reach between 2400 and 3200 Mt/y at 2050, depending on the assumed value of URR. A further analysis shows that the high end of this range, which corresponds to our ‘GSI’ scenario, can be considered as the probable upper-bound to India’s domestic coal production. Comparison of production based on the ‘GSI’ scenario with India’s predicted demand shows that the domestic production of coal will be insufficient to meet the country’s rising coal demand, with the gap between demand and production increasing from its current value of about 268 Mt/y to reach 300 Mt/y in 2035, and 700 Mt/y by 2050. This increasing gap will be challenging for the energy security of India.