EIA Predicts 50% Increase in World Energy Consumption by 2030
Natural gas
Worldwide natural gas consumption in the IEO2008 reference case increases from 104 trillion cubic feet in 2005 to 158 trillion cubic feet in 2030. Natural gas is expected to replace oil wherever possible. Moreover, because natural gas combustion produces less carbon dioxide than coal or petroleum products, governments may encourage its use to displace the other fossil fuels as national or regional plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions begin to be implemented. Natural gas is expected to remain a key energy source for industrial sector uses and electricity generation throughout the projection period. The industrial sector, which is the world’s largest consumer of natural gas, accounts for 43 percent of projected natural gas use in 2030. In the electric power sector, natural gas is an attractive choice for new generating plants because of its relative fuel efficiency. Electricity generation accounts for 35 percent of the world’s total natural gas consumption in 2030.
Non-OECD countries will account for more than 90 percent of the world’s total growth in production from 2005 to 2030.
Nuclear
Electricity generation from nuclear power is projected to increase from about 2.6 trillion kilowatthours in 2005 to 3.8 trillion kilowatthours in 2030. Higher capacity utilization rates have been reported for many existing nuclear facilities, and it is anticipated that most of the older nuclear power plants in the OECD countries and non-OECD Eurasia will be granted extensions to their operating lives. Still, there is considerable uncertainty associated with nuclear power.
Issues that could slow the expansion of nuclear power in the future include plant safety, radioactive waste disposal, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which continue to raise public concerns in many countries and may hinder the development of new nuclear power reactors.
The take home:
- It is no surprise that world energy use consumption will continue to grow, but the bulk of the growth will be from less economically developed countries. The key here will to be encourage the development of appropriate technologies and infrastructure.
- Liquid fuels will move almost exclusively into the transportation sector and natural gas will replace oil in most of those cases. Natural gas is much cleaner than coal and can be used to throttle systems for peak demands and to smooth the spikes caused by wind-generated electricity.
- Coal consumption will continue to grow assuming their is no new major policy action on carbon – though the report does seem to hint that such action is likely…eventually.
- The full report will be out in July.
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All figures from EIA; Image is CC licensed by flickr user dobrych
Burning more coal doesn’t bother me as much as the lack on the part of predatory capitalists to find a way to use the CO2 it produces! All products coming from the burning of coal are resource feeds. Right now our science is so weak that we ‘leave money on the table’ when we throw out a huge part of the original resource that we paid for! There has to be a way to use this stuff, and the guy who finds it will be very, very rich!
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What we need to fix is how many people are on this planet. People consume — weather it is food for energy or energy for lights, cars etc.
The First World still consumes 70 to 80 percent of global natural resources, and doing so maintains a high quality of life. In the Third World, wealth and the standard of living is declining.
First and Third Worlds focus on creating sustainable local and regional economies. The standard of living, the quality of life, and the quality of the environment are slowly improving in both First World and Third World nations.
In such a Fortress World, the global environment is declining, damaged by global warming, destruction of forests, fisheries, and farmland, and pollution and the destruction of natural resources. With this declining global environment deadly diseases such as AIDS and super-resistant strains of the Flu, Tuberculosis, Cholera, and Malaria are devastating the populations of the First and Third World.
Threatened by increasing anarchy and disorder, this Fortress World faces a global political, economic, and environmental collapse. With this global collapse, much like with the collapse of Rome, billions of people will face increasing wars and brutal conflicts over declining global resources and the declining ability of the global environment to support massive populations.
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Coal is the worst soarce of fuel!
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