International Energy Workshop; our energy future through the eyes of the
world's energy specialists.


                           Marc Beurskens
                           FOM Rijnhuizen


The International Energy Workshop was held on 22-24 June 2004 at the
International Energy Agency (IEA), Paris, France. I attended this meeting
with two objectives in mind: 1) How do energy specialists think about the
energy future and 2) what do they think the role of fusion energy can be? In
this colloquium I will give a summary of the main presentations held on the
workshop. I will pay special attention to the dispute on peak oil and gas
predictions, the special role of renewables and their potential, the
hydrogen economy and to the vision people have on nuclear energy including
fusion energy. On the last topic it is clear that the fusion community still
has a lot of mission work to carry out. Fusion does not appear in any of the
energy scenario's for this century displayed in the workshop, but in the one
designed by our colleagues from the Institute for Plasma Physics in
Garching. A positive note though is that, through their work, both in formal
and informal discussions fusion energy starts being considered for future
energy scenario developments.