Shell says: Last gasoline car built in 2070

Nov 04, 2013

Shell has put a rough date on the extinction of gasoline as a means of powering passenger road vehicles. By 2070 its says that the market could be “nearly oil-free”, with power coming from an extensive hydrogen infrastructure.

The figure comes from Shell’s latest ‘New Lens Scenario’ report, which for the past 40 years have explored how economic, political and social forces will shape global energy demand and the environment over the coming century.

The first of two scenarios – ‘Mountain’ – sees new government policies accelerating the use of natural gas and ‘carbon capture and storage’ technology. The scenario predicts that natural gas will be the world’s chief energy source by 2030.

“Entirely removing oil from road transport worldwide is a truly colossal undertaking,” the report reads. “With reduced growth of travel demand, increased vehicle efficiency, and natural gas, electricity and hydrogen increasingly in use, liquid fuels for passenger road transport decline after a global peak in 2035.”

Perhaps the most interesting statistic Shell highlights is that last number – passenger vehicles using liquid fossil fuels will be a relatively rare sight just 35 years after they are at their most ubiquitous.

Shell does, however, see a dramatic rise in the use of natural gas, with the eight countries that produced 60% of global gas in 2012 increasing their share for the next thirty years.

Shell’s openness concerning the rise of electric and hydrogen-fuelled vehicles seems at odds with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s recent assertion that the oil giants are attempting to sow the seeds of doubt in buyers’ minds by undermining climate change science.

“It’s kinda like the battle again ‘big tobacco’ in the old days, and how they’d run all these ads about how tobacco’s no problem,” he told The Guardian newspaper in London last week.

“Ninety-nine per cent of scientists can agree on one thing, but in the public mind [lobbyists] try to convey that scientists disagree. Technically true, but absolutely misleading,” he added.

What’s also technically true is that the major oil companies now recognise that the status quo in regard to energy has to change in the next century.

Source: ecomento and origin pdf