Future oil demand is wildly uncertain

The future is still wide-open for global fossil fuel demand, according to a meta-analysis of 16 market outlooks compiled this week by think tank Resources for the Future.

First and foremost, the chart above shows that there’s still so much uncertainty about how aggressive governments will get about climate policy that predicting fossil fuel demand even a few years into the future, let alone decades, is a fool’s errand — which makes investing in the sector a risky proposition.

But the data also show that a long future for fossil fuels is all but guaranteed, and that, the report says, “a phaseout is not a prerequisite to achieving international climate goals.”