Some Current Issues in Energy Demand and Energy Consumption
World energy use has increased steadily over the past several decades. Much of the growth in world energy consumption has been concentrated on the use of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal). This trend is expected to continue over the foreseeable future. Industrially mature nations will continue to rely on fossil fuels to meet their energy needs for all end uses, but the greatest rate of energy use is projected to occur in the emerging economies of the developing world. In these developing nations, fossil fuel use will be needed to feed growing industrial machinery, particularly the energy-intensive energy end uses that are needed to build industrial infrastructure, such as cement and steel-making, paper and pulp, and other energy-intensive processes. In this article, the trends of worldwide energy use by region are discussed. Also considered are the drivers of increased energy use, and the ramifications for future energy demand. These include the impact of increased global energy demand on the environment and the role that advancing technologies may play on the world’s future energy mix.
Non-fossil-fuel energy sources (i.e., nuclear power and renewable energy sources) face difficulties in competing with fossil fuels. In the case of nuclear power generation, the industry has encountered political, economic, and social difficulties in many parts of the world, beginning with the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979 and at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986. There is strong public sentiment against nuclear power in much of the industrialized world, based on concerns about plant safety, radioactive waste disposal, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Some growth in nuclear power may be expected among the developing countries of the world, particularly in developing Asia, where 17 of the 35 nuclear power reactors currently under construction worldwide may be found. However, the industrialized world is by and large expected to see a decline in nuclear power generation over the long term, as aging reactors are retired and are not replaced by new nuclear generators.
Renewable energy sources enjoy a great measure of popularity with the public—both because these sources of energy are cleaner burning compared to other energy sources and because they are not subject to resource depletion, perceived to be a problem for fossil fuels. However, renewable energy sources cannot yet compete economically with fossil fuel resources. With fossil fuel prices likely to remain moderate over the next quarter century, renewable energy sources will probably fail to gain market share relative to the fossil fuels in a business-as-usual scenario. In the absence of significant government policies aimed at reducing the impacts of carbon-emitting energy sources on the environment, it will be difficult to encourage a wide- scale expansion of renewable resources.
It should also be noted, however, that the renewable energy forecasts presented here deal only with commercial renewable energy sources, i.e., those projects connected to national electricity grids. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that noncommercial, traditional biomass resources are the primary sources of heating and cooking for 2.4 billion people in the developing world. Unfortunately, sources of comprehensive data on the use of noncommercial fuels are not readily available on a consistent, worldwide basis, and so cannot be included in projections of global energy consumption. The IEA expects the developing populations of the world to begin to switch away from traditional fuels to commercial alternative energy sources, but the reliance on the noncommercial fuels will clearly remain strong in the mid-term future given the high levels of current use.
Another trend that is expected to continue is a move toward improving energy intensity. As time goes by and energy technologies become more efficient and widespread, energy use becomes more and more productive. That is, by employing more efficient technologies, less energy is needed to produce the same amount of output. One part of the world where this is particularly obvious is among the nations of the former Soviet Union. Rich with fossil fuel resources and mired in dysfunctional political and economic systems, Russia and the Soviet satellite nations used energy very inefficiently for much of the past half century. With the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, these economies began to transition into a market-based economic system, and already the old, Soviet-era machinery and technologies are being replaced by more energy- efficient capital stock. This has meant an improvement in the region’s energy intensity since the mid- 1990s. As these trends continue, the transitional economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union will begin to see patterns of energy intensity that resemble those of the industrialized world.
The real growth in energy use is projected to occur in the developing economies of the world. Economic expansion is being accompanied by consumer demand for energy-consuming products. Growing demand for energy to fuel industrial end uses, as well as energy demand in the residential, commercial, and especially transportation and electric utility sectors, will have profound implications for the world’s geopolitical relationships. There is tremendous opportunity for large increments of world energy consumption in these economies, as nations strive to advance standards of living to match those of the industrialized world. In particular, many nations that are emerging economically will see consumer demand increasing for personal motor vehicles and a wide assortment of home appliances, including televisions and personal computers. National electrification has become an important goal of many of these nations, to improve both the productivity and the standards of living of their populations.