reader Korev Assert that the International Energy Agency’s forecasts are biased. Below are forecasts from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration.
figure 1: World coal consumption, 1980-2021, million short tons (blue), and forecasts for 2022 and 2025. Recession peak-to-trough dates as defined by NBER are in gray. Source: Environmental Impact Assessment, Here (October 2023)National Bureau of Economic Research.
Note that the EIA forecast for 2022 is lower than 2021, which is in sharp contrast to the IEA’s July 2023 forecast.Although the IEA’s forecast (shown in this postal) Does show bias, Liao et al. (2016) It is shown that most of the bias so far is due to the upward bias in GDP forecasts, which is a key input to forecasts.
The IEA projects production in 2024 at 8.38 billion short tons, while the DoE EIA reference scenario projects production in 2025 at 8.34 billion short tons. Log-linear interpolation puts production in 2024 at 8.38 billion short tons. There is not much disagreement at the moment as both predictions are similar.
