powering human progress

February 14, 2008

Meeting electricity demand is essential to economic growth through 2030.

It’s a fact that many might find surprising: The largest energy-consuming sector is not transportation or industry — it’s power generation. Today, about 35 percent of the world’s total energy usage goes toward the production of electricity.

Electricity demand goes hand-in-hand with human progress. In coming decades, as populations increase, economies expand, and billions of people move up the economic ladder, global demand for electricity will grow significantly.

ExxonMobil’s Energy Outlook to 2030 takes an in-depth look at how our world’s growing need for electricity will shape long-term energy trends. Some key findings:

• Global energy demand will be about 40 percent higher in 2030 than in 2005, even assuming significant improvements in efficiency. Almost half of this energy demand increase will come from power generation requirements, which are likely to grow by an average 1.5 percent annually.
  
  
• Electricity demand will grow fastest in developing countries, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, where today per-capita electricity use is only about one-tenth the level in North America. By 2030, per-capita electricity use in developing countries will be about 70 percent higher than in 2005, with total demand more than doubling.
  
  
• Meeting electricity demand will require strong growth in the fuels used for power generation — including coal, natural gas, nuclear power and renewables. While demand for coal is expected to decline over time in developed countries, it will still be the largest source of power generation globally in 2030, owing to economic expansion in developing countries.

We invite you to learn more by reading The Outlook for Energy — A View to 2030, an analysis of long-range energy trends now available on our web site. In it, we look at what’s driving the world’s growing need for electricity, options for meeting that demand, and technologies that can help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions associated with power generation.

Our world faces many energy challenges through 2030. One of the most important is meeting the world’s growing need for electricity, and the human progress that it powers.

In our next op-ed, we will look at the transportation sector and its effect on energy trends through 2030.