An Oil Giant’s Case for Peak Demand, Even Without Climate Heroics
BP’s annual energy outlook sees consumption topping out in the next decade even in its most likely scenarios.
A BP Plc petrol and refueling station in London.
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One of the biggest international oil companies has concluded that oil consumption will peak this decade.
That’s the main takeaway from BP Plc’s annual energy outlook published this week outlining a handful of scenarios for the future of global fuel and electricity demand, and it’s a big admission in its own right. Even bigger is the way BP concludes it will happen: not because of aggressive policies aimed at reaching net-zero global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, nor as a result of carbon prices or other interventions aimed at limiting global temperature rise to 2° Celsius over pre-industrial levels. No, BP says that even if energy policy keeps evolving at pretty much the pace it is today, oil demand will still start declining.