In light of these two facts – substantially increased consumption and a ceiling once a certain level of development is reached – it seems reasonable to use the per capita demand of the UK today as a template for the rest of the world in two decades. If anything, this is overly conservative – after all Britain is a comparatively wealthy country with a high standard of living and relatively cold climate.
A world two decades from now with 9 billion people, where each person uses the same energy as the average Brit does at present, would mean constant global consumption of around thirty terawatts of energy – 290,000 TwH a year, slightly less than double what it is right now.
While this forecast is higher than predictions elsewhere (British Petroleum foresee global demand of twenty-three terawatts by 2035), being generous with projections makes sense. Any transition to renewables should not be viewed as needing less energy than at present. After all, if we are serious about making a transition suficiently quickly to prevent catastrophic warming, a large margin of error matters.
Of paramount importance is that decarbonisation start immediately. In 2017 the International Energy Agency announced the beginning of ‘decade zero’, saying that if a global transition away from fossil fuels didn’t start over the next ten years, warming beyond two degrees would become close to certain. The following year the IPCC repeated those sentiments, concluding wide-scale decarbonisation had to begin before 2030 to avoid ‘catastrophic’ climate change in excess of 1.5 degrees centigrade.
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