1.1 A world divided in energy 5
Figure 1.5: The worlds oil consumption divided in regions, plotted from 1989 to
2014. Figure taken from 3.
proximately every thousand years. It was not until the 17th century and the
industrial revolution that the growth accelerated dramatically and between year
1600 and 1800 the population doubled so that 1 billion people lived on the earth
simultaneously. Between year 1900 and 2000 the population more than tripled.
Recent development of the human population can be seen in gure 1.6, where
both population numbers and annual growth rates are plotted.
The annual growth rate can be expected to remain positive until around 2070.
However, before then it is most likely that we will reach around 10 billion people.
The increase in population means that more energy is required to provide for
approximately an extra China and India. Provided the new population require
what corresponds to the energy consumed in the US per capita, we can add
another 13000 Mtoe to the consumption. Energy forecasters expect that world
energy consumption will increase with an average annual rate of 1.1 % up until