GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN—In the Monday morning session of the Nobel Week Dialogue, Fatih Birol, the person at the International Energy Agency who produces the group's World Energy Outlook reports, gave an overview of the global energy economy. If there was any theme to the discussion, it was that the things you thought you knew simply aren’t true anymore. Or as Birol put it, former importing countries are becoming major energy exporters.

There’s no clearer example of this than the US, where shale gas is completely reshaping the energy landscape. It has displaced coal for domestic electricity production, with the suddenly surplus coal largely going to Europe at the moment. (In a later discussion, it became clear that the EU was experiencing the mirror image of the US’ coal trends, with coal use rising there.) Birol predicted that once the infrastructure was in place to export liquified natural gas, that would also find its way to Europe.

This situation has sent ripples through the energy economy. Canada, which has largely been sending its excess energy south, is now looking to export more to Asia. If the projected natural gas exports to Europe do take off, Russia will see one of its largest buyers start cutting back on the natural gas it produces (a trend that already started during the EU’s economic downturn).

And the US isn’t the only example. Birol described how, thanks to Brazil’s aggressive push into biofuels, the discovery of large offshore oil reserves will turn the country into a significant exporter rather than it selling that oil domestically. Meanwhile, projections suggest that Middle-Eastern countries are on track to consume as much energy in 2030 as China does today.

One of the results of these rapid shifts is that energy costs have developed strong regional differences. The US has natural gas prices that are half of those typically paid in Asia and a third of what Europe is paying. So although it’s clear that we have a global market—what’s going on in the US is spilling over to many other nations—it hasn’t produced a single global price on energy.

It’s also not having a huge impact on the global access to energy. 1.3 billion people still lack electricity, and 2.6 billion lack clean cooking facilities. The people most affected by this are in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, areas that also have significant reserves of fossil fuels. Obviously, bringing more of these people into the energy economy will drive many of the energy trends over the next few decades.

What else should drive this economy? Concern about climate change. Right now, Birol said, trends suggest that we’ll see a 3.6°C (6.48°F) change by the end of the century, a difference that he said “will have devastating impacts for all of us,” sea level rise, extreme weather events, and water crises among them.

Birol had two solutions that could each contribute to avoiding this devastation. The first is something the IEA has been pushing for a while: get rid of fossil fuel subsidies, which Birol called the “number one public enemy.” Despite this effort, these subsidies increased to $544 billion in 2012. The second is efficiency. The IEA has identified a variety of efficiency measures that can save more money than they cost, which could make a significant dent in global energy use.

Getting rid of subsidies and fully taking advantage of economically viable efficiencies won’t be enough to fully avoid 3.6°C of climate change. But it would get us partway to the goal of limiting climate change to 2°C, and all at no cost. Whether we take these actions, Birol seemed to suggest, would be a strong measure of how serious we are about climate change.

This post is part of Ars' coverage of the 2013 Nobel Week Dialogue. It first appeared on the Dialogue's website.