Breakthrough: What Does the Future of our Global Energy Consumption Look Like?

By Alisha Fowler, Breakthrough Generation Fellow. Cross-posted from the Breakthrough Generation Blog

We talk a lot about the future of global energy consumption, and the implications of continued development in China and India, but it is a hard future to conceptualize. We do not really know what it will look like to add billions of people to our energy grid. Luckily, for the visual learners out there, the folks over at The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development (EJSD) did a simple light experiment to help people envision the future of global energy use in our current system - literally.

First, they examined a map of global night brightness in 1996 - an image that serves as an excellent proxy for where energy use is concentrated.

Image below the fold...

In this map, the U.S., Europe, and Japan burn the brightest. Their coastlines are outlined, illuminating their industrialized existence. India, and China, despite their booming populations and increasing energy demands, are not even on the map (let alone South America or Africa, or even Australia!).

The EJSD then took this image and explored what the Earth would look like at night if everyone consumed electricity like Americans did in 1996. It would look something like this:

Areas in red indicate the largest increases in energy use, surprise surprise South and East Asia! This image does not even take population growth into account, or future estimates of increasing energy consumption and human activity.

We already know, and can now see, that China and India will sharply alter the geography of world energy consumption.

This visual representation reinforces that we must take rapidly industrializing countries into account as we consider scalable, viable energy solutions. We must do this if we are to create a sustainable, just and prosperous global future.

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