Energy Use to Increase by 70 Per Cent (Although We Could Cut it by 50 Per Cent)

First the bad news. According to the US Energy Information Administration, energy use will increase by 71 percent by 2030, with the fastest growth coming from China, India and Latin America.

Now the good news. Energy consumption could easily be cut in half, if clean energy technologies that are currently available were applied now, according to the International Energy Agency.

One of the key methods should be energy efficiency. “Improved energy efficiency is an indispensable component of any policy mix, and it is available immediately,” says Claude Mandil, the head of the IEA. Accelerating energy efficiency improvements alone can reduce the world’s energy demand by an amount equivalent to almost half of today’s global energy consumption, said Mandil.

So if energy use is going to increase by 70 per cent but we could reduce consumption by 50 per cent that still means that we face an increase in energy consumption. Which is bad news for the climate and even more reason to act now.