This blog explores per person energy use by country to better understand global energy consumption patterns.
Electricity powers nearly every aspect of modern life: everything from transportation to food production to building construction requires some amount of energy usage. In 2023, our global energy use reached a record high of 620 exajoules, with each exajoule equaling 24 million tons of oil equivalent. With the vast majority of global energy still being powered by fossil fuels, our growing global energy use has enormous consequences for people and the planet.
But energy isn’t used equally all around the world. Some parts of the global population live much more energy-intensive lifestyles than others. Looking at countries’ per capita energy usage can help us understand how energy is used around the world.
Why Use Per Capita Energy Statistics?
Per capita statistics on a country level can give us a very different understanding of a problem than raw numbers alone. Per capita statistics divide a given metric by the size of a country’s overall population, which is why “per capita” is synonymous with “per person.” This allows us to compare measurements across countries while controlling for different population sizes.
Using per capita statistics is especially useful for considering how much energy people use around the world. China consumes more energy than any other country in the world, but it also has the world’s second largest population. When looking at energy use per capita, China falls out of the top 25 most energy-intensive countries. China uses a little more than double the total energy used by the United States, but its population is nearly four times as large. Using per capita energy statistics gives us a more nuanced understanding of overall energy use by country.
Countries with High Per Capita Energy Use
Unsurprisingly, wealthier countries tend to have higher per capita energy usage: people in wealthy countries tend to use more energy through transportation, food production, access to luxury goods, and healing and cooling buildings. But not all wealthy countries use energy to the same extent. Countries whose economies heavily rely on oil and gas production, like Qatar, Kuwait, and Brunei, rank highly on per capita energy usage in part because of generous energy subsidies that keep energy prices low for everyday citizens.
Countries located in extreme climates and countries with populations distributed across large areas also tend to have high per capita energy use. Canada’s small population, large landmass, and frigid annual temperatures boost Canadian energy use per capita to be among the highest in the world. Similarly, the growing prevalence of extreme heat in Australia is pushing its per capita energy use higher and straining the country’s electrical grid.
Countries with Low Per Capita Energy Use
A global energy comparison shows that most countries with the lowest per capita energy usage are among the poorest countries in the world. Many of them are located in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and include countries where significant portions of the population have no access to energy at all. Even where people do have regular access to energy, low-income countries usually have much lower rates of car use, manufacturing, and climate-controlled infrastructure. Political instability and conflict drive down per capita energy consumption as well. In Yemen, whose civil war has been ongoing since 2014, the per capita energy use has fallen by over half since 2000. Less than half of the population has access to electricity at all. This falling energy use represents a massive decrease in quality of life for the Yemeni people.
The Type of Energy People Use Matters
Not all energy use is created equally. Iceland has one of the highest energy usages per capita, but 66% of Iceland’s energy comes from geothermal sources. Geothermal energy is renewable, and though it does contribute some greenhouse gas emissions, its environmental impact is overall much lower than that of fossil fuels.
South Korea, on the other hand, has high per capita energy use while relying heavily on imported coal as an energy source. Because South Korea has little domestic fossil fuel production and an unfavorable geography for renewable energy, transitioning to new sources of energy has been slow and difficult. South Korea’s high per capita energy use is consequently more environmentally impactful than in other parts of the world.
Population Growth and Energy Use
As the global population continues to grow, energy use by country, and overall energy use, is likely to continue to grow with each passing year. Examining the trends in per capita energy consumption around the world can help us understand how different countries balance meeting the needs of their populations with working toward a more sustainable energy future for all.
Image credits: Choropleth map (Energy use per person, 2023 by Our World in Data); Canadian truck in snowy weather (Snow or Shine, a Truck Sets out on Highway 16 by B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Transit is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Geothermal energy plant (Jack Catalano, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)