World energy consumption 1800-2000: the results

The definitions of energy consumption adopted (See: World Energy Consumption 1800-2000: Definitions and Measurements) and the sources of information inventoried (See: World Energy Consumption 1800-2000: Sources of Information) make it possible to construct chronicles of the past two centuries during which the average annual growth of the world population (1.0%) was largely exceeded by that of energy resource consumption (1.7%). The overall trajectory of the latter obviously masks considerable differences in time and space. Already noticeable before 1800 (Read: World energy consumption before the industrial era), they are widening between the major regions of the world under the effect of the economic upheavals linked to the successive industrial revolutions that brought new energy sources[1]

Understanding this dynamic requires a careful, and therefore critical, examination of the evolution of the consumption of each energy source, region by region. In order not to make the article too long, the chronicles will only be presented in decennial steps, even though they have been reconstituted on an annual basis.
 

1. Evolution of world consumption

How has the consumption of the major primary energy sources evolved since 1800? What part have the major regions of the world played in this evolution?

1.1. World consumption by primary energy source

The adoption of decadal steps and counting in million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) introduces some bias (Table 1): natural gas only appears in 1890, whereas 75 toe appear in the statistical series as early as 1882 and this fuel was used locally as early as the first half of the 19th century; hydroelectricity, and even more so water power (water mills), are much earlier than the 1 Mtoe that the table shows in 1910; in a series presented at the Geneva Conference (1955), the United Nations counted 6 billion kWh in 1860, i.e., 0.5 Mtoe, and 34 in 1910, i.e., 2.9 Mtoe[2].

Table 1: World consumption by energy source (Mtoe)

Note. It should be remembered that primary electricity is counted in Mtoe on the basis of its consumption equivalence, which divides its share in total energy consumption by 2.5 compared to its production equivalence.

What does a comparison of the above series with those of other authors[3] teach?

Total consumption, all sources combined, is almost identical in 1950 (2,158 Mtoe) with that of P. Putnam (2,222) and that of Woitinsky (2,148), which are the terminal years. From 1960 onwards, a comparison with the data of the World Energy Conference (WEC) and then of the World Energy Council (WEC) reveals an almost identical starting point (3,323 Mtoe) (3,306) and then an increasing divergence (10,714 instead of 9,242 in 2000), which can be largely explained by different choices of thermal equivalence for primary electricity The WEC biomass consumption by traditional means (930 Mtoe) in 1990 confirms the above assessment (938) obtained by other methods. For the 19th century, only Palmer Putnam’s series is available: it differs significantly from the one in the table, in 1860, for reasons related to the limitations of this author’s assessments (See: World Energy Consumption 1800-2000: Sources of Information). Generally speaking, the validity of this biomass series can only be assessed after examining the various regional series of which it is the sum.

If we limit ourselves to commercial sources, a greater number of comparisons is conceivable, since on a global scale, with certain reservations, consumption differs little from production. Therefore, series such as those of Bouda Etemad and Jean Luciani or those of the United Nations (Geneva Conference) can be used. In addition, the data of Joël Darmstadter are excellent references for the years between the two wars. The following can be noted:

• the evolution of the consumption of the commercial sources shown in Table 1 is always lower than the world production of the same sources over the whole period studied, which is expected;
• the difference is less than 7%, usually between 3 and 5%, in 1800 and then throughout the 20th century, for reasons related to the choice of equivalence coefficients for primary electricity[4];
• it can also be explained by an imperfect treatment of consumption attributable to bunkers, including those of ships, which are excluded from national consumption in the United Nations statistics[5];
• on the other hand, the larger discrepancies in coal consumption in the 19th century, especially between 1830 and 1850, draw attention to the gaps in the information on English coal exports at that time, which are not all found in the form of imports from the various regions of the world: corrections will have to be made to the latter, especially in Asia, Oceania and Latin America

Under the reservations due to these statistical imprecisions, especially for the consumption of biomass, some major features emerge from the evolution traced above.

Biomass, mainly in the form of wood burned by households for cooking and heating in cold or temperate regions, as well as by crafts and industry, was the most widely used primary energy source throughout the 19th century: more than 90% of total consumption until 1843, more than 80% until 1866, before an average decline of 10 percentage points per decade, until 1903, when it fell below 50% to the benefit of mineral coal and the first liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons to be included in the energy balance.

The decline continued thereafter, but at a much slower pace and in stages: 40% in the 1910s, due to the First World War in Europe, then 35% between 1927 and 1935, due to the crisis in the Western economies. After the Second World War, biomass resumed its relative decline to a low of 11%, which has been unchanging since 1971 because of the consumption of fuelwood by a growing rural population in Latin America, Asia and Africa. This drop of almost 90 points does not mean a decrease in the volumes of biomass burned annually, which have tripled in two centuries, but obviously not in the same regions of the world (Read: Biomass and Energy).

Estimated at around 7 Mtoe in 1800, world consumption of mineral coal exceeded 2,100 in 2000, an average annual growth rate of 2.9%, in particularly contrasting stages. Until the First World War, it was the source of the strong upward trend in the growth of total world energy consumption, as a result of an expansion in the use of mineral coal at an average annual rate of 4%, increasing its share of the world energy balance from 2.6% in 1800 to 12% in 1850, 25% in 1875 and 56% in 1913. This was followed by a relative decline in two stages: around 50% between the two world wars, then 25% until the end of the 20th century, before an upturn in the first decade of the 21st century.

Behind the 1.2% growth in world coal consumption between 1913 and 2000, the growth of hydrocarbons, oil and natural gas, at an average annual rate of more than 5%, and that of primary electricity, hydraulic and nuclear, at more than 7%, i.e., at the end of the period, shares in total energy consumption of 36% for oil, 20% for natural gas and 10% for electricity.

1.2 World consumption by region

The evolution of the world energy balance is difficult to understand without disaggregating it at the level of the major regions of the world, whose consumption has varied considerably from one period to another.

How have the trends by region been constructed? Since 1950, the data are those of the United Nations, after slight modifications to make the United Nations and Angus Maddison regional breakdowns coincide and to replace certain equivalence coefficients by others deemed more realistic. Prior to 1950, the data are the result of a search for consistency between three approaches:

• summing up national chronicles, whenever long series of primary consumption by country could be reconstructed; this approach is sufficient in itself when these chronicles are of good quality and when the consumption of the countries represents almost all of the regional consumption;
• the search for data on regional consumption, which can be found for some years in the compilation by Joël Darmstadter;
• direct estimation of regional biomass trends using expert or historical accounts and demographic series.

An examination of these reconstructions, region by region, reveals extreme inequality in the quality of the data and therefore in the reliability of the series (Table 2).

Table 2: World consumption by region (Mtoe)

With the inclusion of biomass in world energy consumption, Asia, the most populous continent, remains at the top of the world energy balance from 1800 (50%) to 1850 (38%). At that time, it was more or less on a par with Europe (from the Atlantic to the Urals) but, contrary to what we know about the consequences of the first industrial revolution, the most significant change in the first half of the 19th century did not come from Europe. Total energy consumption there increased by about 60%, for both demographic and economic reasons, but the main change came from North America, whose share jumped from 5 to 15%. The population of the subcontinent increased fivefold under the pressure of immigration and found forest resources such that per capita consumption there very quickly exceeded the volumes observed on other continents (Read: Mineral coal in the United States: the first steps of the industry).

This predominance will continue until the Second World War when North America will consume more than 40% of the energy sources exploited in the world, largely in the form of hydrocarbons, for a population of less than 7% of the world population.

In the meantime, Western Europe’s share increased from 20% to 30% throughout the 19th century because the doubling of its population was accompanied by an increase in per capita consumption thanks to the strong growth in the use of coal, but in 1900 its 1.6 toe/capita, on average, were far from North America’s 2.9. This difference would become even more pronounced during the 20th century, as Western Europe’s share would be halved as a result of the substitution of coal by hydrocarbons and more efficient conversions.

After 1950, the most notable changes came from the doubling of Eastern Europe’s share, from 10 to 20% between the beginning and the end of communism, which was the bearer of a very energy-intensive economic growth model, and, even more so, from the economic boom in Asia, whose consumption rose from 16 to 35% of the world’s energy balance (See: Energy in China: from the beginning of our era to the establishment of communism and Energy in China: the construction of socialism).

2. Africa

This is the region whose energy consumption statistics are the most fragile for three reasons: the share of biomass in the form of fuelwood is still preponderant; national statistical services are recent; historical studies are rare (Table 3).

Table 3: Energy consumption in Africa (ktoe)

The reconstructed evolution must therefore be interpreted with all the more caution since even the demographic data on which biomass consumption estimates are based are periodically revised[6].

Over the past two centuries, for an average annual population growth of 1 or 1.2%, energy consumption has grown by 1.6% per year, a trajectory that includes a doubling of this rate since 1950.

The predominance of biomass, from 100% in 1800 to 70% in 1950 and 48% in 2000, was only very slowly undermined by coal, whose consumption increased from 2 Mtoe in 1900 to 17 in 1950, almost exclusively in South Africa, and by a little less petroleum products from imports or small crude production in Egypt.

It was only during the second half of the 20th century that Africa’s energy balance began a real transformation, with the share of modern energy sources rising from 30% in 1950 to 52% in 2000. In addition to mineral coal, which is now widely used in South Africa and in smaller quantities in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), Malawi and Zambia, petroleum products have replaced coal in other countries (see: The Mineral Coal Industries in Africa: History and Prospects), particularly in those countries that are becoming crude oil producers: Egypt, Algeria, Gabon, Angola, Libya, Congo and Nigeria. In the same countries, some natural gas began to be consumed in the 1960s. At the same time, the development of electrification was based, among other things, on the installation of hydroelectric schemes, particularly in Egypt (Aswan), Mozambique (Cahorra Bassa), Zaire (Inga I and II) and Mali (Read: Mali: the hydroelectric scheme of Sélingué).

3. North America

In contrast to the previous one, this region is the richest of all in long series on energy consumption. It is made up of only two countries, one of which is dominant (the United States) and has long-standing federal statistical services and numerous historical studies[7].

Table 4: North American Energy Consumption (ktoe)

The most striking features of this evolution (Table 4) are the duration of the predominance of biomass, which in 1870 still accounted for 80% of total energy consumption, and the rapidity of the shift to mineral coal, whose share jumped from 6% in 1850 to 64% in 1900 (See: Mineral coal in the United States: the first steps of the industry).

From then on, biomass gave way first to coal, whose share (73%) peaked during the First World War, and then to oil and natural gas, whose growth was irresistible between 1950 (56%) and 1973 (77.4%). The first oil crisis halted this rise in favour of coal, which made a strong comeback in thermoelectric production, and nuclear power, which contributed to the tripling of the share of primary electricity, from 3.6% in 1973 to 11.1% in 2000.

4. Latin America

This huge region stretches from Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. The sources of information for commercial sources are the same as for the previous regions[8]

. Biomass consumption is treated as for Africa by multiplying the annual number of inhabitants by an assumption of the evolution of per capita consumption (Table 5).

Table 5: Energy consumption in Latin America (ktoe)

Except in the form of cargoes of English coal unloaded in the ports of Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro, in particular to supply the first gas plants, coal was not very present in the energy balance of the subcontinent in the 19th century and did not grow much in the 20th century: the 10% reached in 1900 did not exceed 15% between 1911 and 1913 and then fell back to between 3 and 5% until the end of the 20th century. This was due to a late industrial take-off and limited coal mining in both Chile and Brazil until it took off in Colombia at the end of the 20th century, but for the international market rather than for domestic consumption.

It was therefore almost exclusively on petroleum products that Latin America industrialized and developed its transport systems, relying on the oil industries of many countries, including those of Mexico and Venezuela (See: Oil: the old concessions of Venezuela and the Middle East; Oil: reforms and renegotiations of the upstream regime in Venezuela and the Middle East and Petroleos de Venezuela). This supply was very early supplemented by natural gas, which was exploited in Argentina as early as 1913. From 35% of total consumption in 1950, hydrocarbons have continued to gain ground until representing 70% at the end of the 20th century (Read: El fracking: por qué en Argentina ; Shale oil y shale gas en Argentina).

5. Asia

Keeping in mind the limitations due to the deficiencies of the available statistics[9], the continent’s energy consumption seems to have increased more than 20-fold over the past two centuries due to the six-fold increase in population and access to energy sources other than biomass (Table 6).

Table 6: Asia’s energy consumption (ktoe).

More than in other regions of the world, the evolution of energy consumption in Asia took a sharp turn after the Second World War with a jump from 0.6% to 4.4% in average annual growth. In addition to population growth rates of 0.5 to 2.0%, the economic reconstruction of Japan and the industrialization of South Korea, China, India and many other Southeast Asian countries stimulated the need for new energy sources.

Chief among these was mineral coal, whose share of the region’s energy balance had risen from 3% in 1900 to 21% in 1950 due to the development of Japan’s coal industry, not only on its territory but also in Manchuria and Korea. Between 1950 and 2000, the development of new coal industries in China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia supported an average annual growth in consumption of 5%. (Read: Energy in China: from the beginning of our era to the establishment of communism and Energy in China: the construction of socialism).

On the other hand, unlike Africa and Latin America, Asia has made less use of hydrocarbons, excluding the oil-producing countries of the Middle East. While the share of oil products peaked at 38% of total consumption during the first oil shock, the share of natural gas never exceeded 11%, both because production is limited throughout the Far East and because imports in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) are very expensive.

6. Russia and Eastern Europe

The combination of Russia, the former Soviet republics and the countries of Central Europe in the same region has lost much of its significance since the fall of communism in the early 1990s. From a double-secular perspective, however, one cannot forget the long period of common history of all these countries which has left a strong imprint on the growth of their energy consumption (Table 7).

Table 7: Energy consumption of Russia and Central Europe (ktoe)

However, knowledge of the latter is far from equal: while the evolution of consumption in Russia from the middle of the 19th century is relatively well known, that of its neighbours is less so. Data are particularly scarce for Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and Hungary, all of which have been transformed, or even created, by several political re-divisions[10].

Despite these obstacles, some trends emerge from the reconstruction. The growth in total consumption during the 19th century at an average annual rate of 1.4% certainly exceeds the 1.0% of the population, but not by much, since biomass remains predominant (65% in 1900) even though the efficiency of the means of combustion seems to have improved (Read: Energy in Russia before 1917).

Neither the coal of the Donbass nor the oil of Baku disrupted an energy balance sheet shaped by still archaic methods of heating, craft and industrial production or transport. With the advent of communism in the Soviet Union in 1917 and in the countries of Central Europe after the Second World War, the rate of growth in energy consumption rose to 3.5% between 1920 and 1990 for a population whose growth rate fell to 0.7%.

The first five-year plans were based on a rapid development of coal, from the Donbass to the Urals, then oil and natural gas took over after the Second World War (Read: The energy development of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1950). The share of the former in the region’s energy balance rose from less than 20% in the early 1920s to nearly 70% in the early 1950s, while that of the latter made the same jump between 1950 and 1990. These averages obviously mask significant differences between countries in the region, but the centralized energy policy, based on common transport infrastructures and consumption standards, has tended to unify the energy consumption model.

7. Western Europe

Like North America, the region is fairly well supplied with statistical sources, but it is much more fragmented and heterogeneous.

11] The follow-up of the series is made more complex by the changes in borders, both within the region and between regions (case of East Germany – GDR). Finally, it should be remembered that Turkey has been included in the Asia region (Table 8).

Table 8: Western European Energy Consumption (ktoe)

Of all the regions, Western Europe has experienced the most contrasting growth in energy consumption over the past two centuries. Its average annual rate of 1.6% over the entire period is the result of a sustained expansion of 1.8% between 1800 and 1910, followed by a quasi-stagnation of 0.1% between 1910 and 1950, and then a recovery at a rate of 2.4% thereafter. Since population growth of 0.6% varied little, the changes in pace were due to changes in the energy balance and economic development.

The former involved the industrial boom in the United Kingdom and then in the main countries of continental Europe and the increasingly massive use of mineral coal, whose consumption grew at an average annual rate of 2.8% until 1830 and then 4% until the eve of the First World War. Its share of total consumption jumped from 12.5% in 1800 to 31.3% in 1830, 48.6% in 1850 and 80.2% in 1910, overtaking biomass in the early 1850s. This predominance persisted until the end of the Second World War before a rapid decline to 32.0% in 1970 and 14.0% in 2000.

In all European countries, coal consumption was supplemented from the end of the 19th century and then gradually replaced by oil products, which jumped from 2% of the energy balance in 1920 to 12% in 1950 and then 60% in 1973, their peak. In contrast to North America, which has a rich subsoil, Europe only began to use natural gas on a massive scale very late: from 10% in 1973 to 22% in 2000, i.e. a slightly higher share than the 19% of primary electricity, which has been growing strongly since the large-scale production of nuclear power from the late 1970s.

8. Oceania

The region is limited to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands[12]. The quality of the available data is all the more mediocre as demographers do not agree on the evolution of the population in the 19th century[13] Fortunately, it has little impact on the evolution of world energy consumption (Table 9).

Table 9: Oceania’s energy consumption (ktoe)