Suggested Citation:
McCarthy, Ryan W., Christopher Yang, Joan M. Ogden (2008) California Energy Demand Scenario Projections to 2050. Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, Research Report UCD-ITS-RR-08-11

This report describes five alternative scenarios for future energy demands in California, developed at UC Davis as part of the Advanced Energy Pathways (AEP) project.

The Advanced Energy Pathways is a project of the California Energy Commission’s (CEC) Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program, with contributing researchers from the University of California, Davis (UCD); Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL); Global Environment and Technology Foundation (GETF); and the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). The primary objective of the AEP is to analyze the impacts of alternative transportation energy pathways on California’s natural gas and electricity sectors through the year 2050.

The scenarios presented here are intended to span a wide range of possible energy demand futures for California and provide an energy demand context for AEP’s analyses of integrated energy supply strategies. In this report we present a methodology for scenario development that enables us to quantify the electricity, natural gas, and transportation fuel demands between 2005 and 2050 for a range of demographic, economic, and technical assumptions. The scenarios provide transparent estimates of future energy demands that will feed into subsequent energy systems modeling. These future AEP studies will model future energy supplies and infrastructure in California to determine how these demands, as well as additional energy demands due to advanced transportation fuels and technologies, will be met.