Review of Global Energy Consumption

Global energy consumption has about doubled in the last three decades of the past century. In 2004, about 77.8% of the primary energy consumption is from fossil fuels (32.8% oil, 21.1% natural gas, 24.1% coal), 5.4% from nuclear fuels, 16.5% from renewable resources, of which the main one is hydroelectric, 5.5%, whereas the remaining 11% consists of non-commercial biomasses, such as wood, hay, and other types of fodder, that in rural-economies still constitute the main resource. These ’rural’ biomasses (mainly fodder) are usually ignored by statistical reviews of energy consumption proposed by oil companies, but for a correct global perspective they ought to be considered, because at least two thirds of human kind still lives in rural and artisanship economies not too different from the European Middle Age. For example, in the U.S. in 1850 two thirds of the mechanical energy was obtained from horses, and in 1925 horses were still 30 million. To fix ideas, the amount of energy currently consumed everyday by human kind corresponds to the heating value of 100 large oil tankers. Not accounting for the 1.2 Gtoe/yr of ’rural biomasses’, the fraction of energy demand covered by fossil fuels in 2004 appears to be 87.7%, a percentage often cited by various sources. Direct solar energy usage is about 11 Mtoe (millions, not billions of toe), less than 0.1% of the global consumption.

The fuel share in world’s total consumption in 2012 can be tabulated as follows:

S.N.	Fuel type	Energy(Mtoe)	% share
1.	Coal	907	10.1
2.	Oil	3645	40.7
3.	Natural gas	1365	15.2
4.	Biofuel	1113	12.4
5.	Electricity	1625	18.1
6.	Others	314	3.5

In 2012, almost 19% of total energy consumption is done by different modes of renewable sources. The promotion and implementation of renewable energy is increasing day by day exponentially due to various reasons like GHG reduction, low operation cost, decreasing fossil fuel reserves etc.

The contribution of different modes of renewable sources (among total 19%) is as follows:

S.N.	Renewable energy type	% share
1.	Traditional biomass	9%
2.	Biomass/geothermal/solar heat	4.2%
3.	Hydropower	3.8%
4.	Wind/solar/biomass/ geothermal power	1.2%
5.	Biofuels	0.8%

The total installed capacity/ total world consumption of different renewable energies are as follows:

S.N.	Energy type	Total consumption/production
1.	Biomass energy	116.5 Billion liter
2.	Geothermal energy	76TWh
3.	Hydropower energy	1000 GW
4.	Solar PV	139GW
5.	Solar thermal heating and cooling	326GW
6.	Wind	318GW

References:

          Key world energy statistics, 2012, IEA

                 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

                Renewables 2014 world status report, 2014, REN21

  WORLD ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND RESOURCES, Gian Paolo Ber