As EIA’s model uses the policies in place right now to create future projections through 2050, a “business as usual assumption drives the reference case, … [and] makes [EIA] projections of energy very conservative,” Paul Saundry, Johns Hopkins University professor and chief scientist of the nonprofit National Council for Science and the Environment, told Utility Dive.
“Their model is not set up to recognize evolving advances in policy or strong advances in technology,” he said, echoing EIA administrator Linda Capuano’s comments that the outlook is a projection, “not a prediction.”
