The Global Gas Model (GGM) of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), which acts as the complex and powerful engine behind the organisation’s flagship annual publication of the GECF Global Gas Outlook 2050 has been rigorously upgraded to take into account the impact of COVID-19 and other developing scenarios.
A workshop, the third such edition was held recently, with the participation of GECF’s Member Countries and the Secretariat’s Energy Economics and Forecasting Department (EEFD) team that manages the GGM.
“The GGM is a breath-taking example of what can happen when you combine the scientific curiosity with the most advanced repository of data tools and datasets available today. I am pleased to note that the GGM has been continuously updated to remain the beating heart behind our most cited work, the GECF Global Gas Outlook,” said GECF Secretary General, Yury Sentyurin.
Building on the largest commercial energy databases featuring millions and millions of data series, the GGM now allows the organisation to compete with other big forecasting agencies and provide an independent, credible voice of the gas industry, said EEFD Head Dmitry Sokolov in his introduction. It is a repository of more than 500 microeconomic and price parameters, and offers full energy balances of economic and energy data on 140+ countries and 60+ aggregations covering over 30 sectors of the modern economy and 35 fuels from year 1990 up to 2050.
The workshop encompassed the key 2021 GECF scenario highlights, macroeconomic and energy price assumptions, policy assumptions, natural gas demand prospects, and natural gas supply and technology assumptions.
The main session was followed by a Q&A. Highlighting the key 2021 GECF scenarios, Hussein Moghaddam, Senior Energy Forecast Analyst explained the main differences between the 2020 and 2021 reference case scenario, including changes in the energy market, new attitude towards the energy transition, and the accelerated pressure on governments to respond to climate change. “Of course, COVID-19 created big changes, both in terms of consumer behaviour and policy behaviours as well as in terms of investments.”
The baseline RCS is in addition to other scenarios of the Outlook, such as the Carbon Mitigation Scenario, Carbon Neutrality Scenario, Hydrogen Scenario, to name a few. The macroeconomic and energy price assumptions were explicated by Galia Fazelyanova, Energy Economics Analyst, including the macro and price sub-models, which, according to her, are the primary starting points in any forecasting activity of the GGM. “It is very pertinent to point two major changes.
First, the changes have happened due to COVID-19 on economic activity in 2020-21 vs 2019 projections. Second, significant change has been made to Brent crude oil price revision, from $70 in 2019 to $60 in 2020-2021.” Sid-Ahmed Hamdani, Energy Policy and Environment Analyst, unlocked the policy assumptions and noted that a momentum seems to have been built around the world to reduce national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
“Compared to 2019, the number of countries that have pledged to net zero has increased significantly. Currently, countries that generate more than 70 percent of the global GHG emissions have now been covered by some form of net zero reduction pledges.” Providing preliminary projections on natural gas demand, Mr Alexander Ermakov, Energy Econometrician, in his session on natural gas demand prospects noted that global natural gas demand is expected to grow by 45 percent to 5,460 billion cubic metres in 2050. “Asia Pacific will witness a robust rise of gas usage in road and marine transport.”
Finally, in the culminating session of natural gas supply and technology assumptions, Seyed Mohsen Razavi, Energy Technology Analyst, gave an overview of the new discoveries and other developments in the upstream sector as well as other t e c h n o l o g y r e l a t e d observations.
“In the GECF reference technology map, the focused changes for the next edition are in fuel substitution; introduction of bio-energies, electricity, hydrogen, in carbon capturing and sequestration; CCS, CCU, and direct capture.” Other technology impacts accounted for are in efficiency improvement, energy conservation, and recyc l i n g a n d m a t e r i a l enhancement.
