World primary energy consumption source

World primary energy consumption by energy source... 

Looking back in the history, energy consumption of the world is constantly increasing. The trend of energy consumption in the world is shown in Fig. 1. In this diagram, oil, coal and natural gas has the largest consumption share of world primary energy, oil, coal, and natural gas are the three main sources. 

Renewable energy sources or renewables contributed 2% of the world s energy consumption in 1998, including 7 exajoules (EJ) from modem biomass and 2 EJ for all other renewables (UNDP, 2000). The renewables are clean or inexhaustible and primary energy resources. Renewable technologies like water and wind power probably would not have provided the same fast increase in industrial productivity as fossil fuels (Edinger and Kaul, 2000). 

Another view to consumption is that the world consumption of crude oil and liquids from natural gas in 2001 reached 76 million barrels per day (MMbpd). North America is the largest energy consumer at 24.1 MMbpd. The Asia-Pacific regional demand is steadily increasing. In 2001, Asia-Pacific comprised 27.2 percent of the world s oil demand, up from 20 percent in 1990.2 Crude oil s share of primary energy consumption was 39.4 percent in 2001. Thus, petroleum oil and natural gas remain the steadfast energy sources globally, as shown in Fig. 18.1.2... 

Renewable sources of energy contribute about 20% of the world s primary energy consumption at present. Most of them are fuelwood and hydropower. 

The natural gas sources are spread unevenly over the world with almost 70% of the natural gas reserves located in the Middle East, Russia and the Caucasus region as shown on Figure 4. Provided the consumption of primary energy sources is maintained at present level the depletion time is reportedly 60.7 years for natural gas according to BP [3] (40.6 years for oil, and 204 years for coal)1. Although these estimates do not reflect the real source, they confirm that the fossil resources are rather limited and may be depleted within a few generations. 

The petroleum contribution to the world s primary energy requirements was about 47% in 1974 (Table 24-1). But this contribution varies strongly from country to country. Petroleum covers 95% of the primary energy requirements of Denmark, 73% in the case of Japan, and 52% for West Germany. Consequently, many highly industrialized countries depend heavily on imports, mainly from Arabic countries (Table 24-2). Nuclear and hydroelectric sources only play a quite minor role in the present-day supply of primary energy the consumption of energy in 1974 by the United States was covered to 44% by petroleum, 31% by natural gas, 21% by coal, 3% by hydroelectricity, and 1% by nuclear power stations. 

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