The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)'s Annual Energy Outlook 2019 (AEO2019) provides modeled projections of domestic energy markets through 2050, and it includes cases with different assumptions about macroeconomic growth, world oil prices, and technological progress.
Natural gas prices remain comparatively low based on historical prices during the projection period, leading to increased use of this fuel across end-use sectors and increased liquefied natural gas exports.
The power sector experiences a notable shift in fuels used to generate electricity, driven in part by historically low natural gas prices. Increased natural gas-fired electricity generation; larger shares of intermittent renewables; and additional retirements of less economic coal and nuclear plants occur during the projection period.
The AEO2019 Reference case represents EIA’s best assessment of how U.S. and world energy markets will operate through 2050, based on many key assumptions. For instance, the Reference case projection assumes improvement in known energy production, delivery, and consumption technology trends.
In projecting generation from geothermal energy the report estimates an average annual 3.9% increase in capacity from 2018-2050:
- 2018 - 2.46 GW
- 2019 - 2.49 GW
- 2020 - 2.61 GW
- 2030 - 4.86 GW
- 2040 - 7.29 GW
- 2050 - 8.37 GW
