Energy consumption levels vary greatly throughout the world. The industrialised countries, where only a quarter of the world population live, consume almost three quarters of all energy. A large part of their energy requirements are met by burning fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas. This releases carbon dioxide, which is responsible for the greenhouse effect. Since the mid-60s, global CO2 emissions have more than doubled as a direct result of meeting energy needs, and industrialised countries bear most of the responsibility. Each US citizen produces roughly twice as much CO2 as the average German and twenty times as much as the average Indian.

According to current forecasts, the world’s energy requirement could as much as double over the next 25 years. The major part of this enormous increase will be in developing countries, in particular in threshold countries in Latin America and South-East Asia, as well as in China and India. The reasons for the significant increase in energy requirements there are population growth and the need to catch up in the areas of economic and social development.

The threat of climate change

If developing countries are to find their way out of poverty, they will have no option in future but to consume more energy. At the same time, this must not be allowed to exacerbate the threat of impending climate change. 

Climate researchers at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believe that average temperatures could rise by between 1.4 oC and 5.8 oC by the year 2100. The consequences would be dramatic: expanding desert regions, drought, storms and catastrophic floods. Global poverty would become more acute as such changes hit people in developing countries hardest. On the one hand, they depend to a large extent on agriculture for their livelihoods, and on the other, natural disasters destroy at a stroke hard-won development gains that took decades to achieve. Researchers also fear that greenhouse gases will impair the filter function of the air layers in the atmosphere and lead to an increased incidence of illness.

To save future generations from having to suffer preventable disasters and illnesses, there is no alternative: the industrialised nations have to make massive cuts in their CO2 emissions.