Energy Consumption
Access to energy is a key requirement to social and economic development, and is critical to improving the livelihoods of people globally. However, due to rising population and prosperity global energy consumption has grown rapidly over the past century. Demand has grown and will continue to grow for all sources - coal, oil , nuclear energy, natural gas, and renewables.
The visualization below breaks down the energy consumption by source from 1800 through 2019.
There are a few fascinating features to highlight in this graph:
- The amount of energy consumed from all the sources has risen drastically year over year.
- Oil was being pumped out of the ground in 1860s and even though it is a convenient and portable source of energy, it did not really make its mark as an energy source until about 1920, and it started to surpass coal only from 1965.
- The 1970s oil price shock led to increased exploration endeavors thus uncovering huge deposits of natural gas in many parts of the world. And today, natural gas is considered equally valuable as compared to oil and coal and it is widely used for power stations, providing 21% of world electricity.