The Energy Future For The 5 Largest Energy Consuming Nations

Ahh, no wonder I get so much traffic with headlines like that.

Currently the 5 largest energy consuming nations are China, the U.S., Russia, India and Japan.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (DOE EIA), in 2014 the consumption of these countries was:

(Quadrillion BTUs, taken from the US DOE EIA International Energy Outlook for 2013)

• China        124.9
• USA           119.8
• Russia        30.6
• India           26.9
• Japan          21.4
• Total:     323.6

That’s 58% of the 558.7 quads the entire world is estimated to have consumed last year. The same top 5 countries accounted for 19,642 million metric tons of CO2, 59% of the 33,186 mmt’s the world emitted in 2014. (China accounted for almost 30% of global CO2 emissions last year–wow.)

The acronym soup that is the DOE EIA IEO projects energy consumption through 2040. Let’s look at what those countries are expected to do in 2030:

• China        198.9
• USA           102.3
• Russia        38.0
• India           42.6
• Japan          23.0
• Total:     404.8

That would amount to 55.5% of the 729.2 quads the entire world is estimated to consume in 2030. The same top 5 countries will account for 25,404 million metric tons of CO2, 61% of the 41,464 mmt’s the world is projected to emit in 2030. (China is expected to emit almost 34% of global CO2 emissions that year–wow again.)

Although I have written frequently on this blog that I believe these figures are severely underestimating the energy future, for now let’s let that go.

It is clear that any action we take to reduce fossil fuel consumption and/or CO2 emissions must focus on the five countries that are doing the most consuming and emitting.

Of those five, all have active programs to move towards green or greener fuels and to work on lowering emissions. India gets a lot of power from hydroelectricity, as do China and the U.S. The U.S., China and Russia are doing a lot with nuclear power–Japan was as well, before Fukushima. China and the U.S. are active in solar and wind and the U.S. is still producing a lot of ethanol.

But if temperatures start to rise rapidly or the extreme weather that alarmists are falsely claiming is already here actually shows up, their efforts are likely to prove insufficient.