Study shows urgency of low–carbon revolution

A new World Energy Technology Outlook study published by the Commission on 8 January 2007 demonstrates the need for radical change in Europe's energy mix to face the double challenges of energy security and climate change.

The Commission's Research Directorate presented the "World Energy Technology Outlook 2050 (WETO-H2) " on 8 January 2007 as background to the adoption of its comprehensive new energy/climate change package on 10 January.

The study predicts the development of the world's and Europe's energy system to 2050 using three different scenarios:

1. A "reference" (or 'business-as-usual') scenario with moderate climate-change policies and short-term energy production constraints;
2. a "carbon constraint" scenario with stronger climate-change policies, and;
3. a hydrogen scenario, which is a variation on the "carbon constraint" scenario but predicting more hydrogen technology breakthroughs.

It is the second WETO report following the first one , which was published in 2003, and the new study shows comparitively remarkable differences in results. The WETO 2050 report is also more pessimistic than the International Energy Agency's "World Energy Outlook 2006"