Oil prices have broken $50 a barrel, soaring Chinese demand is rocking energy markets, and climate-destabilising carbon emissions grow apace.  The World Energy Outlook 2004 offers the statistical background and analytical insight out of which any solution to the world’s energy problems will have to be crafted.  It includes exhaustive energy statistics and projections till the year 2030, incisive analysis of the high oil-price phenomenon and the reliability of oil reserves data, a hard look at Russia’s future as an energy superpower, an “alternative” scenario for a more sustainable energy world, and a new way of indexing the links between energy and development