IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v35y2010i7p2852-2860.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dynamics of the oil transition: Modeling capacity, depletion, and emissions

Author

Listed:
  • Brandt, Adam R.
  • Plevin, Richard J.
  • Farrell, Alexander E.

Abstract

The global petroleum system is undergoing a shift to substitutes for conventional petroleum (SCPs). The Regional Optimization Model for Emissions from Oil Substitutes, or ROMEO, models this oil transition and its greenhouse gas impacts. ROMEO models the global liquid fuel market in an economic optimization framework, but in contrast to other models it solves each model year sequentially, with investment and production optimized under uncertainty about future prevailing prices or resource quantities. ROMEO includes more hydrocarbon resource types than integrated assessment models of climate change. ROMEO also includes the carbon intensities and costs of production of these resources. We use ROMEO to explore the uncertainty of future costs, emissions, and total fuel production under a number of scenarios. We perform sensitivity analysis on the endowment of conventional petroleum and future carbon taxes. Results show incremental emissions from production of oil substitutes of ≈ 0–30 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon over the next 50 years (depending on the carbon tax). Also, demand reductions due to the higher cost of SCPs could reduce or eliminate these increases. Calculated emissions are highly sensitive to the endowment of conventional oil and less sensitive to a carbon tax.

Suggested Citation

  • Brandt, Adam R. & Plevin, Richard J. & Farrell, Alexander E., 2010. "Dynamics of the oil transition: Modeling capacity, depletion, and emissions," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 2852-2860.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:35:y:2010:i:7:p:2852-2860
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2010.03.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544210001325
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2010.03.014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William D. Nordhaus, 1973. "The Allocation of Energy Resources," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 4(3), pages 529-576.
    2. Brandt, Adam R., 2007. "Testing Hubbert," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 3074-3088, May.
    3. repec:cdl:itsdav:qt6j67z9w6 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Bentley, R. W., 2002. "Global oil & gas depletion: an overview," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 189-205, February.
    5. Wirl, Franz, 2008. "Why do oil prices jump (or fall)?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 1029-1043, March.
    6. Basile, Paul S. & Papin, Alexander, 1981. "World oil: A long-term look," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 6(6), pages 529-541.
    7. Dermot Gately & Hillard G. Huntington, 2002. "The Asymmetric Effects of Changes in Price and Income on Energy and Oil Demand," The Energy Journal, , vol. 23(1), pages 19-55, January.
    8. Farrell, Alexander E. & Sperling, Dan, 2007. "A Low-Carbon Fuel Standard for California, Part 2: Policy Analysis," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt8ng2h3x7, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    9. McDonald, Alan & Schrattenholzer, Leo, 2001. "Learning rates for energy technologies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 255-261, March.
    10. John Livernois, 2009. "On the Empirical Significance of the Hotelling Rule," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 3(1), pages 22-41, Winter.
    11. repec:cdl:itsdav:qt5245b5kx is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Pindyck, Robert S., 1981. "Models of resource markets and the explanation of resource price behaviour," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 130-139, July.
    13. Sperling, Daniel & Gordon, Deborah, 2009. "Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195376647.
    14. Kolstad, Charles D., 2000. "Energy and Depletable Resources: Economics and Policy, 1973-1998," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 282-305, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Okullo, Samuel J. & Reynès, Frédéric, 2011. "Can reserve additions in mature crude oil provinces attenuate peak oil?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 5755-5764.
    2. Chan, Gabriel & Reilly, John M. & Paltsev, Sergey & Chen, Y.-H. Henry, 2012. "The Canadian oil sands industry under carbon constraints," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 540-550.
    3. Peter Frumhoff & Richard Heede & Naomi Oreskes, 2015. "The climate responsibilities of industrial carbon producers," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 132(2), pages 157-171, September.
    4. Scholtens, Bert & Wagenaar, Robert, 2011. "Revisions of international firms’ energy reserves and the reaction of the stock market," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 3541-3546.
    5. Gregory F. Nemet and Adam R. Brandt, 2012. "Willingness to Pay for a Climate Backstop: Liquid Fuel Producers and Direct CO2 Air Capture," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    6. Allison Piedrahita & Laura M. Cárdenas & Sebastian Zapata, 2025. "Solar Panel Waste Management: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Path to a Circular Economy," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(7), pages 1-26, April.
    7. Brandt, Adam R., 2010. "Review of mathematical models of future oil supply: Historical overview and synthesizing critique," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(9), pages 3958-3974.
    8. Kim, Seunghyok & Koo, Jamin & Lee, Chang Jun & Yoon, En Sup, 2012. "Optimization of Korean energy planning for sustainability considering uncertainties in learning rates and external factors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 126-134.
    9. Lin, Boqiang & Wesseh, Presley K., 2013. "What causes price volatility and regime shifts in the natural gas market," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 553-563.
    10. Ortas, Eduardo & Moneva, José M., 2013. "The Clean Techs equity indexes at stake: Risk and return dynamics analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 259-269.
    11. Okullo, Samuel J. & Reynès, Frédéric, 2016. "Imperfect cartelization in OPEC," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 333-344.
    12. Hallock, John L. & Wu, Wei & Hall, Charles A.S. & Jefferson, Michael, 2014. "Forecasting the limits to the availability and diversity of global conventional oil supply: Validation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 130-153.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ujjayant Chakravorty & Andrew Leach & Michel Moreaux, 2009. ""Twin Peaks" in Energy Prices: A Hotelling Model with Pollution Learning," Working Papers 2009-10, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    2. Brandt, Adam R., 2010. "Review of mathematical models of future oil supply: Historical overview and synthesizing critique," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(9), pages 3958-3974.
    3. Cotrina-Teatino, Marco A. & Marquina-Araujo, Jairo J., 2024. "Hotelling rule in non-renewable resources: A bibliometric and systematic literature review analysis," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    4. Okullo, Samuel J. & Reynès, Frédéric & Hofkes, Marjan W., 2015. "Modeling peak oil and the geological constraints on oil production," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 36-56.
    5. Jakobsson, Kristofer & Söderbergh, Bengt & Höök, Mikael & Aleklett, Kjell, 2009. "How reasonable are oil production scenarios from public agencies?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4809-4818, November.
    6. Gronwald, Marc, 2012. "A characterization of oil price behavior — Evidence from jump models," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 1310-1317.
    7. Lin, Boqiang & Wang, Ting, 2012. "Forecasting natural gas supply in China: Production peak and import trends," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 225-233.
    8. Chakravorty, Ujjayant & Leach, Andrew & Moreaux, Michel, 2011. "Would hotelling kill the electric car?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 281-296, May.
    9. Chakravorty, Ujjayant & Leach, Andrew & Moreaux, Michel, 2008. ""Twin Peaks" in Energy Prices: A Hotelling Model with Pollution and Learning," IDEI Working Papers 52, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    10. van Ruijven, Bas & van Vuuren, Detlef P., 2009. "Oil and natural gas prices and greenhouse gas emission mitigation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4797-4808, November.
    11. Johannes Pfeiffer, 2017. "Fossil Resources and Climate Change – The Green Paradox and Resource Market Power Revisited in General Equilibrium," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 77, April.
    12. Ali Mirchi & Saeed Hadian & Kaveh Madani & Omid M. Rouhani & Azadeh M. Rouhani, 2012. "World Energy Balance Outlook and OPEC Production Capacity: Implications for Global Oil Security," Energies, MDPI, vol. 5(8), pages 1-26, July.
    13. Sue Wing, Ian, 2006. "Representing induced technological change in models for climate policy analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(5-6), pages 539-562, November.
    14. Verbruggen, Aviel & Al Marchohi, Mohamed, 2010. "Views on peak oil and its relation to climate change policy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 5572-5581, October.
    15. Vatter, Marc H., 2017. "OPEC's kinked demand curve," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 272-287.
    16. Wie, Jiegen & Wennlock, Magnus & Johansson, Daniel J.A. & Sterner, Thomas, 2011. "The Fossil Endgame: Strategic Oil Price Discrimination and Carbon Taxation," RFF Working Paper Series dp-11-26, Resources for the Future.
    17. Xiaoyi Mu and Haichun Ye, 2015. "Small Trends and Big Cycles in Crude Oil Prices," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    18. Yang, Guangfei & Li, Xianneng & Wang, Jianliang & Lian, Lian & Ma, Tieju, 2015. "Modeling oil production based on symbolic regression," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 48-61.
    19. James L. Smith, 2009. "World Oil: Market or Mayhem?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(3), pages 145-164, Summer.
    20. Wang, Ting & Lin, Boqiang, 2014. "Impacts of unconventional gas development on China׳s natural gas production and import," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 546-554.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:35:y:2010:i:7:p:2852-2860. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.