This data-file assesses 25 countries’ and regions’ energy use by country versus income, as those countries have developed, over the past 50-years. Energy intensity of GDP of the global economy has fallen by 1.0% per annum over the past half-century and now stands at 1.8 MWH per $k of GDP. The work is discussed further here and here.
We have cross-plotted GDP per capita versus total primary energy, total useful energy, total CO2 emissions and the relative shares of coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar and other energy.
Early industrialization is most energy intensive, as energy consumption rises 1:1 with GDP growth and mostly sourced from coal and oil.
Later industrialization is less energy intensive, with the ‘beta’ falling to 0.6-0.8% pa and $10-30k pp pa GDP. And middle income countries start to prefer cleaner energy, especially natural gas (thus coal falls, chart below).
In developed countries, energy use per capita does seem to plateau, at around 25MWH pp pa, and this is also when decarbonization most steps up too.
Energy intensity of GDP of the global economy has fallen by 1.0% per annum over the past half-century and now stands at 1.8 MWH per $k of GDP. Some commentators in the energy transition are tempted to use ‘energy intensity of GDP’ as a proxy for ‘efficiency of the global energy system’. We explore this definition in our recent overview of global energy efficiency.
Note: the last data points in this file are 2020, intended mainly as a record of historical trends into energy intensity by country type, rather than as a tracker of recent energy demand which can be found in our other energy market models. We will update for 2021 and 2022 data, when the 2022 actuals are released.