World energy consumption problems

The world faces two energy problems: most of our energy production still produces
greenhouse gas emissions, and hundreds of millions lack access to energy entirely.

First of all to clear out the situation and trends of energy consumption over last 50 hundred
years I decided to take 3 biggest countries considering population from each continent and
compare their consumption and generation of electricity over the given time period. To
implement such research I used time series statistical analysis method.

The list of countries:

Africa Asia Europe North Oceania South

America America
 Nigeria  India  Germany  United  Australia  Brazil
 Ethiopia  China  Italy States of  Papua  Argentina
 Egypt  Thailand  France America New  Peru
 Canada Guinea
 Mexico  New
Zealand

Primary energy consumption, measured in terawatt-hours

Electricity generation, measured in terawatt-hours

Analysing those charts I noticed that the over all energy consumption has increased as
electricity generation too. But it does not mean that we do not have scarcity of electricity
right now. The most increase as you can observe took place in developed countries such as
USA, China and Canada.

Below on the scatter plot you can see that a lot of poor countries scarce electricity. It also
means that people in very poor countries have very low emissions. On average, people in the
US emit more carbon dioxide in 4 days than people in poor countries – such as Ethiopia,
Uganda, or Malawi – emit in an entire year.

The reason that the emissions of the poor are low is that they lack access to modern energy
and technology. The energy problem of the poorer half of the world is energy poverty.

When people lack access to modern energy sources for cooking and heating, they rely on
solid fuel sources – mostly firewood, but also dung and crop waste. This comes at a massive
cost to the health of people in energy poverty: indoor air pollution , which the WHO calls
“the world’s largest single environmental health risk.” For the poorest people in the world it
is the largest risk factor for early death and global health research suggests that indoor air
pollution is responsible for 1.6 million deaths  each year, twice the death count of poor
sanitation.
The use of wood as a source of energy also has a negative impact on the environment around
us. The reliance on fuelwood is the reason why poverty is linked to deforestation.

Then I decided to find out more about energy sources we used in the last century and
compare them to nowadays. As I said at the beginning that’s the second global energy
consumption problem and it is more well known, and relates to the right hand-side of the
scatterplot above: greenhouse gas emissions are too high.

Those that need to reduce emissions the most are the extremely rich. Within richer countries,
where few are suffering from energy poverty, even the emissions of the very poorest people
are far higher.

The only countries that have emissions that are close to zero are those where the majority
suffers from energy poverty.

The focus on the rich, however, can give the impression that it is only  the emissions of the
extremely rich that are the problem. What isn’t made clear enough in the public debate is that
for the world’s energy supply to be sustainable the greenhouse gas emissions of the majority
of the world population  are currently too high. The problem is larger for the extremely rich,
but it isn’t limited to them.

As you can see the difference difference between 1985 and 2021 is noticeable, but still we
can’t find proper replacement to fossil fuels. From 21st century you can observe the increase
in renewables sources of energy. Also we still need to consider that fossil fuels are way
cheaper than renewables energy. So it’s still a task for our generation to find cheap and
sustainable source of energy which can be used in developed countries and as much as in
developing countries.

Nuclear power and renewables emit far less carbon (and are much safer) than fossil fuels.
Still, as the last chart shows, their share in global electricity production has decreased from
15.5% to 9.94% in the last three decades.

So it’s still a task for our generation to find cheap and sustainable source of energy which can
be used in developed countries and as much as in developing countries.

The world lacks safe, low-carbon, and cheap large-scale energy alternatives to fossil fuels.
Until we scale up those alternatives the world will continue to face the two energy problems
of today. The energy problem that receives most attention is the link between energy access
and greenhouse gas emissions. But the world has another global energy problem that is just as
big: hundreds of millions of people lack access to sufficient energy entirely, with terrible
consequences to themselves and the environment.