Disparity in energy consumption between countries

Summary

• There is great disparity between energy consumption in developed countries and the rest of the world.

Details

• The US and Canada consuem 2x as much as europe and Japan, 10x as much as india, 50x as much as subsaharan african countries
• poorest 25% consume 3% of the worlds energy
• the US, 5% of the worlds population consumes 27% of the energy

References

• Energy - A Beginners Guide - Vaclav Smil

Quotes

The extent of future global energy needs cannot be understood without realizing the extent of existing consumption disparities. The per caput annual energy consumption in the US and Canada is roughly twice as high as in Europe or Japan, more than ten times as high as in China, nearly twenty times as high as in India, and about fifty times as high as in the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa

The enormous disparity in access to energy is most impressively conveyed by contrasting the national or regional share of the global population with their corresponding share of world-wide primary energy consumption: the poorest quarter of humanity (including most of sub-Saharan Africa, Nepal, Bangladesh, the nations of Indochina, and rural India) consumes less than three per cent of the world’s primary energy supply while the thirty or so affluent economies, whose populations add up to a fifth of the global total, consume about seventy per cent of primary energy (Figure 30). The most stunning contrast: the US alone, with less than five per cent of the world’s population, claims twenty seven per cent of its primary commercial energy

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