A highly aggregated model of the energy economy links supplyand use in the united kingdom at a future time when naturally occurring oil has become uneconomic compared with the alternatives. Published forecasts of costs and efficiencies are used as a reference about which wide variations of values are investigated. The objective is to discover whether a robust preference can be expressed, on cost grounds, for electric or for liquid fuelled road transport despite uncertainty in the individual estimates. The report concludes that there is, on present knowledge, a strong but not an overwhelming preference for liquid fuelled transport. If wider considerations than cost alone should dictate the choice of electric transport, the most likely size of the cost penalty is several thousand million pounds per year. (Author/publisher)
Abstract