Energy use by country: how does it change as income increases?

This data-file assesses 25 countries and regions’ energy use by country versus income, as those countries have developed, over the past 50-years.

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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 from to 0.6-0.8 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.

Further research. Our recent commentary on energy use by country versus income is linked here. Our article on how deepening energy shortages could devastate low-income countries is linked here.

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