Annual Energy Outlook 2020 Case Descriptions

Release date: January 29, 2020

Overview

Factors such as economic growth, future oil prices, the ultimate size of domestic energy resources, and technological change are often uncertain. To illustrate some of these uncertainties, EIA runs side cases to show how the model responds to changes in key input variables compared with the Reference case. The various cases covered in the Annual Energy Outlook 2020 (AEO2020) are described in this document. AEO2020 has seven core cases:

• Reference
• High Economic Growth
• Low Economic Growth
• High Oil Price
• Low Oil Price
• High Oil and Gas Supply
• Low Oil and Gas Supply

EIA also introduces two new cases to capture uncertainty around the cost of electricity generated from renewable sources:

• High Renewables Cost
• Low Renewables Cost

Table 5 provides the formal case names, scenario names, and date keys. Results for all AEO2020 cases are available on the AEO table browser.

Because AEO2020 is a full edition of the AEO, EIA ran additional cases to support Issues in Focus analyses, which will be released later this year. The topics of these analyses are

• Alternative policies—cases analyzing renewable portfolio standards, the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, possible carbon allowance fees, and the amount paid for electricity generated by end users and sold to the grid
• Global natural gas demand