Global Energy Consumption Trends Overview

Hey everybody, it's Mr. Smeeds, and today we'll be covering topic 6.2, which is patterns and trends in global energy consumption, which is a fancy word for use. Our objective for the day is to be able to describe trends in energy consumption, and the skill that we'll practice at the end of today's video is calculating an answer with appropriate units. So the first trend we'll talk about in terms of energy use is how developed versus developing nations use energy at different rates. So the average citizen or the average person in a developed country is going to use a lot more energy than the average person in a developing country. So they consume more energy on a per capita or a per person basis. But because there are so many more people in the developing world, meaning populations of countries that are still developing have more total people than the developed world, they use a higher share of the world's total energy. So that's important to point out. We should know that in the United States and many developed countries, we use about five times as much energy on a per person basis as the world average. So we can look at this graph here and we can see how the energy consumption of the average American compares with the energy consumption of people in poorer nations such as China or Bangladesh. This is a really important point because what we need to know is that in the developing world population is still growing and economies are still industrializing. So as populations grow and as economies industrialize or advance when it comes to manufacturing and consumption of goods, we're going to see an increasing use of total energy by the developing world. So not only are the citizens in the developing world experiencing increasing standards of living that lead to their per capita or their per person energy consumption increasing, but their total population size is still increasing. So there's kind of two large factors that lead to this huge increasing demand in energy consumption in the developing world. The next important trend in energy consumption that we have to be aware of is that fossil fuels are the dominant energy source globally by a long shot. So this is really important to understand, and we can understand this a little bit better if we look at a graph of the total fuel source or energy source consumption globally. We see that the combination of oil, coal, and natural gas, which are referred to collectively as fossil fuels. far, far, far outpaces any other form of energy use on a global scale. What we'll do next is talk about the main uses for each of these fossil fuels. And for oil or petroleum, that's going to be the use in transportation as a fuel source for cars that we know as gasoline. So that's really important to know that that is the main source or the main use of oil and petroleum. Then we have coal. Coal is going to be the main. electricity generation source globally. About 40% of the world's electricity is produced by burning coal. And then finally, we have natural gas, which is a growing form of generating electricity, but it still has not passed coal. And then it's also the main source of heating. And so people will burn natural gas often in the furnaces in their homes or burn them, burn natural gas in furnaces of other buildings. And so that's a really important use as well. If we want to look at the secondary or the second most common form. of energy outside of fossil fuels. It's going to be hydroelectricity. But again, a long, long, long distant second place here. Hydroelectricity is mainly how power is used or how energy is used from water. And so we have a dam that's going to create a reservoir. That water will rush through the dam, which spins a turbine. And then a generator will generate electricity from the kinetic motion of that turbine. We'll talk about this a lot more in depth later in this unit. And then finally... A far far far distant third place to fossil fuels is nuclear power. Nuclear power results in electricity generation by the fission of uranium and it's actually a similar process to generating electricity in a dam or by incinerating waste where we are just going to heat up water which turns into steam. That steam will spin a turbine, that turbine will power a generator, and there we have electricity. The next trend we have to discuss here when it comes to global energy consumption is how increasing development leads to increased fossil fuel demand. So when countries are in their developing stages or they're underdeveloped, often they rely heavily on subsistence fuels. Subsistence fuels are things that can easily be gathered and then burned in the home for heat or for fire for cooking. Some examples would be wood, manure, so dried animal waste, also charcoal. basically any biomass that can be easily collected. So we can see a picture here of a man that's carrying some dried leaves and brush back to his home presumably to burn this again for heat. or for fire to cook as food. And then we also have a woman here who's cooking on an open wood fire. So these are both examples of subsistence fuels. Again, these are heavily utilized in the developing world because they're cheaper and they're readily available. People can just go out and harvest them without paying money to an electric utility or purchasing them on a market. What we need to know though, is that as economies develop and affluence or wealth increases, residents start to demand and to start to use more energy. And so we can see in this chart here, there's a really nice correlation as GDP, which can be thought of as income or personal wealth starts to go up, we're going to see an increase in the per capita electricity demand or the energy demand. And so again, it's a really nice positive correlation. The more wealthy a nation gets, the more energy its citizens demand. And so as they demand more energy, they can no longer rely on subsistence fuels. So they transition to fossil fuels primarily. So this is for things like fuel to power all the cars that they have. So they need more oil to create gasoline. It's also things like natural gas and coal to produce electricity, to power all their gadgets and to heat up the larger homes that people start to purchase. So again, big trend here is as an economy develops, its residents move away from subsistence fuels like biomass. towards fossil fuel consumption. And finally, we'll wrap up our discussion of energy trends by talking about factors that affect energy source use. So the first one is availability. Fossil fuels depend heavily on availability. So what are the discovered reserves of these fossil fuels and what is their accessibility? How easy are they to get to? And so their use is going to vary heavily as we discover more of them and as those reserves get easier to access or as they get more scarce and get harder to access. So here's a great example. We can look at this graph here, and this is going to show us natural gas production from U.S. shales. So we can see around 2010, we get this huge increase in the discovery and the production of natural gas. So that's going to have an impact on price. As we discover a lot more natural gas, price is going to change dramatically. So fracking opens up new natural gas reserves. This increases the availability. And now the price is going to change to reflect that availability. So remember that 2010 was that period when we had this explosion of fracking and more and more natural gas being produced. So if we look at a graph, we can see that around 2010, what happens in the U.S. to natural gas prices, they go down substantially. And that's because of such a big increase in demand. And so what happens is when the price of a fuel goes down dramatically due to more discovery. we can see that its use will go way up. So here we have natural gas. And again, we're going to try to look at this 2010 timeframe here. And we can see that 2010, there's going to be a substantial increase in natural gas going forward due to its decreased price. Now what happens to coal, coal starts to decline a little bit. And that's because more of the energy produced is coming from natural gas. And the final factor that can have a significant impact on energy use is government regulation. So governments can mandate certain energy mix requirements. So for example, a country could say we're going to require our energy utility producers to make 25% of their energy from renewable resources by the year 2025. And so this requires then that those energy utilities, these are companies that sell energy to consumers, that they actually have to get their energy from 25% renewable sources. So this is going to cause a shift in how energy is produced and which energy sources are used. Really important to point out, the government cannot directly change prices. So the government just does not have the power to say gas now costs $10 a gallon. It is not something they can do. And it's one of the most common mistakes that APE students make on FRQs. They say the government should raise the price of coal or the government should lower the price of wind energy. And they simply can't do that, at least not directly. What the government can do is use tax increases on fossil fuel power plants to discourage building of new fossil fuel power plants. The government can also use tax credits, sometimes called rebates, to encourage or to increase the likelihood that companies will build renewable energy plants. And so again, taxes and legislation can incentivize companies to do things, but the government just can't say gas is now $10 a gallon. It's not something that's in their power. So let's look at a map of the world here and we can see that a lot of different nations have different percentages of their electricity or of their energy that's produced from renewable resources. This is going to, in some degrees, reflect their geography, but it's also going to reflect the political sentiment in those countries and their willingness to push green energy. We can see the same thing if we look at a map of the U.S. We can see that states dramatically differ in terms of the total amount of their energy that's produced from renewable resources. So states like Washington and Oregon, Idaho, California, these West Coast states a lot of times are a little more forward thinking or a little more progressive in their energy policies. So they might require their utilities to get more of their electricity from renewable resources, and that results in a shift in energy consumption. So for practice FRQ 6.2 today, we're going to practice performing calculations. You have two story problems here that you need to try to work out. You may use a calculator, but it's also really important that you write these down in your notebook and that you actually show your work. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in today. Don't forget to like this video if it was helpful. subscribe for future Apes video updates, and check out other notes over here to the side. And as always, think like a mountain, write like a scholar.

So the average citizen or the average person in a developed country is going to use a lot more energy than the average person in a developing country. So they consume more energy on a per capita or a per person basis. But because there are so many more people in the developing world, meaning populations of countries that are still developing have more total people than the developed world, they use a higher share of the world's total energy.

So that's important to point out. We should know that in the United States and many developed countries, we use about five times as much energy on a per person basis as the world average. So we can look at this graph here and we can see how the energy consumption of the average American compares with the energy consumption of people in poorer nations such as China or Bangladesh.

This is a really important point because what we need to know is that in the developing world population is still growing and economies are still industrializing. So as populations grow and as economies industrialize or advance when it comes to manufacturing and consumption of goods, we're going to see an increasing use of total energy by the developing world. So not only are the citizens in the developing world experiencing increasing standards of living that lead to their per capita or their per person energy consumption increasing, but their total population size is still increasing.

So there's kind of two large factors that lead to this huge increasing demand in energy consumption in the developing world. The next important trend in energy consumption that we have to be aware of is that fossil fuels are the dominant energy source globally by a long shot. So this is really important to understand, and we can understand this a little bit better if we look at a graph of the total fuel source or energy source consumption globally.

We see that the combination of oil, coal, and natural gas, which are referred to collectively as fossil fuels. far, far, far outpaces any other form of energy use on a global scale. What we'll do next is talk about the main uses for each of these fossil fuels.

And for oil or petroleum, that's going to be the use in transportation as a fuel source for cars that we know as gasoline. So that's really important to know that that is the main source or the main use of oil and petroleum. Then we have coal.

Coal is going to be the main. electricity generation source globally. About 40% of the world's electricity is produced by burning coal.

And then finally, we have natural gas, which is a growing form of generating electricity, but it still has not passed coal. And then it's also the main source of heating. And so people will burn natural gas often in the furnaces in their homes or burn them, burn natural gas in furnaces of other buildings. And so that's a really important use as well.

If we want to look at the secondary or the second most common form. of energy outside of fossil fuels. It's going to be hydroelectricity.

But again, a long, long, long distant second place here. Hydroelectricity is mainly how power is used or how energy is used from water. And so we have a dam that's going to create a reservoir.

That water will rush through the dam, which spins a turbine. And then a generator will generate electricity from the kinetic motion of that turbine. We'll talk about this a lot more in depth later in this unit.

And then finally... A far far far distant third place to fossil fuels is nuclear power. Nuclear power results in electricity generation by the fission of uranium and it's actually a similar process to generating electricity in a dam or by incinerating waste where we are just going to heat up water which turns into steam.

That steam will spin a turbine, that turbine will power a generator, and there we have electricity. The next trend we have to discuss here when it comes to global energy consumption is how increasing development leads to increased fossil fuel demand. So when countries are in their developing stages or they're underdeveloped, often they rely heavily on subsistence fuels.

Subsistence fuels are things that can easily be gathered and then burned in the home for heat or for fire for cooking. Some examples would be wood, manure, so dried animal waste, also charcoal. basically any biomass that can be easily collected. So we can see a picture here of a man that's carrying some dried leaves and brush back to his home presumably to burn this again for heat. or for fire to cook as food.

And then we also have a woman here who's cooking on an open wood fire. So these are both examples of subsistence fuels. Again, these are heavily utilized in the developing world because they're cheaper and they're readily available.

People can just go out and harvest them without paying money to an electric utility or purchasing them on a market. What we need to know though, is that as economies develop and affluence or wealth increases, residents start to demand and to start to use more energy. And so we can see in this chart here, there's a really nice correlation as GDP, which can be thought of as income or personal wealth starts to go up, we're going to see an increase in the per capita electricity demand or the energy demand.

And so again, it's a really nice positive correlation. The more wealthy a nation gets, the more energy its citizens demand. And so as they demand more energy, they can no longer rely on subsistence fuels. So they transition to fossil fuels primarily.

So this is for things like fuel to power all the cars that they have. So they need more oil to create gasoline. It's also things like natural gas and coal to produce electricity, to power all their gadgets and to heat up the larger homes that people start to purchase.

So again, big trend here is as an economy develops, its residents move away from subsistence fuels like biomass. towards fossil fuel consumption. And finally, we'll wrap up our discussion of energy trends by talking about factors that affect energy source use.

So the first one is availability. Fossil fuels depend heavily on availability. So what are the discovered reserves of these fossil fuels and what is their accessibility? How easy are they to get to?

And so their use is going to vary heavily as we discover more of them and as those reserves get easier to access or as they get more scarce and get harder to access. So here's a great example. We can look at this graph here, and this is going to show us natural gas production from U.S. shales.

So we can see around 2010, we get this huge increase in the discovery and the production of natural gas. So that's going to have an impact on price. As we discover a lot more natural gas, price is going to change dramatically.

So fracking opens up new natural gas reserves. This increases the availability. And now the price is going to change to reflect that availability. So remember that 2010 was that period when we had this explosion of fracking and more and more natural gas being produced.

So if we look at a graph, we can see that around 2010, what happens in the U.S. to natural gas prices, they go down substantially. And that's because of such a big increase in demand. And so what happens is when the price of a fuel goes down dramatically due to more discovery. we can see that its use will go way up. So here we have natural gas.

And again, we're going to try to look at this 2010 timeframe here. And we can see that 2010, there's going to be a substantial increase in natural gas going forward due to its decreased price. Now what happens to coal, coal starts to decline a little bit.

And that's because more of the energy produced is coming from natural gas. And the final factor that can have a significant impact on energy use is government regulation. So governments can mandate certain energy mix requirements. So for example, a country could say we're going to require our energy utility producers to make 25% of their energy from renewable resources by the year 2025. And so this requires then that those energy utilities, these are companies that sell energy to consumers, that they actually have to get their energy from 25% renewable sources.

So this is going to cause a shift in how energy is produced and which energy sources are used. Really important to point out, the government cannot directly change prices. So the government just does not have the power to say gas now costs $10 a gallon.

It is not something they can do. And it's one of the most common mistakes that APE students make on FRQs. They say the government should raise the price of coal or the government should lower the price of wind energy. And they simply can't do that, at least not directly. What the government can do is use tax increases on fossil fuel power plants to discourage building of new fossil fuel power plants.

The government can also use tax credits, sometimes called rebates, to encourage or to increase the likelihood that companies will build renewable energy plants. And so again, taxes and legislation can incentivize companies to do things, but the government just can't say gas is now $10 a gallon. It's not something that's in their power.

So let's look at a map of the world here and we can see that a lot of different nations have different percentages of their electricity or of their energy that's produced from renewable resources. This is going to, in some degrees, reflect their geography, but it's also going to reflect the political sentiment in those countries and their willingness to push green energy. We can see the same thing if we look at a map of the U.S.

We can see that states dramatically differ in terms of the total amount of their energy that's produced from renewable resources. So states like Washington and Oregon, Idaho, California, these West Coast states a lot of times are a little more forward thinking or a little more progressive in their energy policies. So they might require their utilities to get more of their electricity from renewable resources, and that results in a shift in energy consumption.

So for practice FRQ 6.2 today, we're going to practice performing calculations. You have two story problems here that you need to try to work out. You may use a calculator, but it's also really important that you write these down in your notebook and that you actually show your work. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in today.

Don't forget to like this video if it was helpful. subscribe for future Apes video updates, and check out other notes over here to the side. And as always, think like a mountain, write like a scholar.

Transcript for:Global Energy Consumption Trends Overview

Transcript for:
Global Energy Consumption Trends Overview