It's incumbent on the oil and gas industry to join the effort to cut emissions as the business-as-usual model is destined to fail, Norwegian major Statoil said.
Statoil in its annual publication, Energy Perspectives, assessed how greenhouse gas emissions progress in the energy sector.
"The world population is growing, more people are joining the middle classes, and the need for energy is increasing. However, a continued parallel increase in CO2 emissions as a result of this prosperity is not sustainable in the long term," Statoil's chief economist Eirik Waerness said in a statement. "Without a change of course, everyone will lose, including the oil and gas industry."
Statoil this week joined five of its European energy peers in issuing a global appeal for a mechanism to limit global warming and curb emissions. Governments around the world were called on to provide a framework in which energy companies can do their part.
Last week in Mexico, the International Energy Agency said policy uncertainty and a lack of incentives leaves global renewable energy development far short of what's needed to abate warming.
In Statoil's annual report, the company examines three long-term scenarios for energy and low-carbon developments. Only under a scenario that calls for "rapid changes" does renewable energy development progress to the point that emissions are cut to limits where warming trends are controlled.
The other two, including one where countries meet self-imposed climate commitments, are deemed "not sufficient" to limit global greenhouse emissions.
"Our analysis stops in 2040, but the negative consequences of climate change in these kinds of scenarios may well become even stronger in the following decades," Waerness said.
