Published: Tuesday, 10 Nov 2009 | 7:13 AM ET

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World energy use will rise rapidly over the next 20 years, increasing costs and greenhouse gases unless a deal is reached to curb carbon dioxide emissions, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday.

Arguing strongly for a global deal at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December to limit greenhouse gases, the IEA said use of carbon emitting fossil fuels would increase quickly if policies remained unchanged.

The world would have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delayed implementing a deal on global warming, the IEA said in its annual World Energy Outlook.

Without an international agreement on climate change, the ratio of energy spending to gross domestic product for the largest consumer countries would double by 2030.

IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol told Reuters in an interview the world needed to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere at 450 ppm of CO2 equivalent.

"The world needs to go to the 450 part per million (ppm) target, not only because of climate change but because of growing problems within our energy system and its possible implications again on the economy," Birol said.

The IEA said global energy demand would rise by an average of 2.5 percent per year over the next five years if governments made no changes to their existing policies and measures.

Fossil Fuel Dominance

Under these circumstances, which the IEA called its reference scenario, world primary energy demand would rise by an average of 1.5 percent per year over the next two decades.

Oil demand, excluding biofuels, would increase by 1 percent per year to 105 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2030 from 85 million bpd in 2008. This was a slight decrease in its demand forecast, reflecting the impact of the global economic downturn.

Last year the agency, which advises 28 industrialized nations, forecast oil demand would reach 106 million bpd by 2030. It previously, saw primary energy demand growth at 1.6 percent per year on average from 2006-2030.

But the IEA stressed the trend towards heavier use of hydrocarbons would be unabated without a climate change deal.

"Fossil fuels remain the dominant sources of primary energy worldwide in the reference scenario, accounting for more than three-quarters of the overall increase in energy use between 2007 and 2030," the World Energy Outlook said.

Natural gas demand would increase 1.5 percent per year to 4.3 trillion cubic meters (tcm) in 2030, under this scenario.

The main driver of demand for coal and gas would be inexorable growth in energy needs for power generation, it said, forecasting in its reference scenario that world electricity demand would grow by 2.5 percent per year to 2030.

Stressing the need to move away from dependence on fossil fuels, Birol said that without a climate change deal, the European Union's annual energy bill would more than double to $500 billion by 2030, up from $160 billion in the last 30 years.

Oil prices soared to a record of nearly $150 a barrel in July last year. They then collapsed to less than $33 last December, but have since recovered to around $80.

The price collapse, combined with the credit crisis, choked off investment and the Paris-based IEA has warned the oil market could surge back, damaging still fragile economic growth.

Birol said the oil price was likely to reach $100 per barrel by 2015 and $190 by 2030: "This means that if we don't do anything to our energy system, we will be in difficulty."

Bank of Ireland analyst Paul Harris said the IEA had taken a "rather cautious approach" in the report. "There's an emerging consensus that the demand and supply balance is really going to start to tighten by 2015 which should sound the death knell for cheap oil."

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