Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, 2021a

3 Population 43
Country
Population
(×10 6 )
Annual
Growth
(×10 6 )
Per Capita
Power (W)
Power Added
Annually
(GW)
Power
Added Per
Citizen (W)
China 1,434 7.2 2,800 20.2 14
United States 329 1.6 10,000 15.6 48
India 1,366 17.7 600 10.5 8
Saudi Arabia 34 0.54 10,100 5.5 160
Iran 83 1.0 4,300 4.3 52
Mexico 128 1.7 2,000 3.3 26
Indonesia 271 3.1 900 2.8 10
Brazil 211 1.3 2,000 2.7 13
Egypt 100 2.1 1,200 2.5 25
Turkey 83 0.85 2,100 1.8 21
Whole World 7,711 86 2,300 143 18.4
Table 3.4: Top ten countries for growth in
energy dem<strong>and</strong>. Populations are in millions.
Power is in Watts or 10 9 W (GW). The power
added annually is the absolute increase in
dem<strong>and</strong> due to population growth, <strong>and</strong> is a
proxy for resource dem<strong>and</strong>s in general. The
last column provides some measure of an individual
citizen’s share of the responsibility
in terms of increasing pressure on resources.
The top three contributors to new power dem<strong>and</strong>
via population growth alone (China,
the U.S., <strong>and</strong> India) account for about a third
of the global total. [7, 8, 19, 20]
20
China
>60
Annual Power Increase (GW)
15
10
5
0
Brazil
USA
Saudi Arabia
Iran
Russia
Mexico
Indonesia
Egypt
Pakistan
Nigeria
India
0 5 10 15 20
Annual Population Increase (millions)
50
40
30
20
10
0
Added Power Per Person (W)
Figure 3.15: Graphical representation of Table
3.4, for all countries. Dots, whose size
is proportional to population, indicate how
many people are added per year, <strong>and</strong> how
much additional energy dem<strong>and</strong> is created
as a consequence. Color indicates the added
population-growth-driven power dem<strong>and</strong>
an individual citizen is responsible for generating
each year as a member of the society.
Negative cases (contracting) include Russia,
Japan, Germany, <strong>and</strong> Ukraine [7, 8, 19, 20].
The last column in Table 3.4 is the per-citizen cost, meaning, for instance
that each person in the U.S. adds about 50 Watts per year of energy
dem<strong>and</strong> via the country’s net population growth rate. 29 In this sense, the
last column is a sort of “personal contribution” an individual makes to
the world’s resource dem<strong>and</strong>s via net population rates <strong>and</strong> consumption
rates in their society. Those having high scores should think twice about
assigning blame externally, <strong>and</strong> should perhaps tend to their own house,
as the saying goes.
29: A citizen of Niger, by comparison, only
adds 1.7 W of dem<strong>and</strong> per year on energy
resources via population growth.
Before departing this section, let us look at continent-scale regions
rather than individual countries in terms of adding people <strong>and</strong> resource
dem<strong>and</strong>s. Table 3.5 echoes similar information to that in Table 3.4, in
modified form. What we learn from this table is that Asia’s dem<strong>and</strong>s are
commensurate with their already-dominant population; North America
creates the next largest pressure despite a much smaller population;
© 2021 T. W. Murphy, Jr.; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Lic.;
Freely available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions.