Source: bp Statistical Review of World Energy.
Note: Primary energy comprises commercially-traded fuels, including renewables used to generate electricity.
The world’s largest economies reveal a pattern of energy growth as they develop. The rate and stages of that growth differ significantly. For advanced economies (United States, Germany, Japan), energy consumption peaked in the mid/late 1990s, stabilized, and slightly declined. This is the outcome of better energy efficiency, but also a level of outsourcing of heavy energy-consuming industries towards developing economies. For developing economies, with China and India as salient examples, energy consumption has increased since the 1990s in part because of economic development and their integration into global manufacturing and trade systems. Because of transportation, a part of the energy profile of an economy is substitutable.