World energy supply and consumption

World energy supply and consumption refers to the global supply of energy resources and its consumption. The system of global energy supply consists of the energy development, refinement, and trade of energy. Energy supplies may exist in various forms such as raw resources or more processed and refined forms of energy. The raw energy resources include for example coal, unprocessed oil and gas, uranium. In comparison, the refined forms of energy include for example refined oil that becomes fuel and electricity. Energy resources may be used in various different ways, depending on the specific resource, and intended end use. Energy production and consumption play a significant role in the global economy. It is needed in industry and global transportation. The total energy supply chain, from production to final consumption, involves many activities that cause a loss of useful energy.
Total energy consumption tends to increase by about 1–2% per year. As of 2022, energy consumption is still about 80% from fossil fuels. More recently, renewable energy has been growing rapidly, averaging about 20% increase per year in the 2010s.
Two key problems with energy production and consumption are greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution. Of about 50 billion tonnes worldwide annual total greenhouse gas emissions, 36 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide was a result of energy use in 2021. Many scenarios have been envisioned to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, usually by the name of net zero emissions.
There is a clear connection between energy consumption per capita, and GDP per capita.
The Gulf States and Russia are major energy exporters. Their customers include for example the European Union and China.
A significant lack of energy supplies is called an energy crisis.

Primary energy production

refers to the first form of energy encountered, as raw resources collected directly from energy production, before any conversion or transformation of the energy occurs.
Energy production is usually classified as:

Fossil, using coal, crude oil, and natural gas;
Nuclear, using uranium;
Renewable, using biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind, tidal, wave, among others.

Primary energy assessment by IEA follows certain rules to ease measurement of different kinds of energy. These rules are controversial. Water and air flow energy that drives hydro and wind turbines, and sunlight that powers solar panels, are not taken as PE, which is set at the electric energy produced. But fossil and nuclear energy are set at the reaction heat, which is about three times the electric energy. This measurement difference can lead to underestimating the economic contribution of renewable energy.
Enerdata displays data for "Total energy / production: Coal, Oil, Gas, Biomass, Heat and Electricity" and for "Renewables / % in electricity production: Renewables, non-renewables".
The table lists worldwide PE and the countries producing most of that in 2021, using Enerdata. The amounts are rounded and given in million tonnes of oil equivalent per year and % of Total. Renewable is Biomass plus Heat plus renewable percentage of Electricity production. Nuclear is nonrenewable percentage of Electricity production. The above-mentioned underestimation of hydro, wind and solar energy, compared to nuclear and fossil energy, applies also to Enerdata.
The 2021 world total energy production of 14,800 MToe corresponds to a little over 172 PWh / year, or about 19.6 TW of power generation.

	Total	Coal	Oil & gas	Renewable	Nuclear
China	2,950	71%	13%	10%	6%
United States	2,210	13%	69%	8%	10%
Russia	1,516	16%	78%	2%	4%
Saudi Arabia	610	0	100%	0	0
Iran	354	0	99%	0	1%
United Arab Emirates	218	0	99%	0	1%
India	615	50%	11%	33%	6%
Canada	536	5%	81%	10%	4%
Indonesia	451	69%	17%	14%	0
Australia	423	64%	33%	3%	0
Brazil	325	1%	55%	42%	2%
Nigeria	249	0	47%	53%	0
Algeria	150	0	100%	0	0
South Africa	151	91%	1%	8%	0
Norway	214	0	93%	7%	0
France	128	0	1%	34%	65%
Germany	102	27%	3%	47%	23%
World	14800	27%	53%	13%	7%

Energy conversion

Energy resources must be processed in order to make it suitable for final consumption. For example, there may be various impurities in raw coal mined or raw natural gas that was produced from an oil well that may make it unsuitable to be burned in a power plant.
Primary energy is converted in many ways to energy carriers, also known as secondary energy:

Coal mainly goes to thermal power stations. Coke is derived by destructive distillation of bituminous coal.
Crude oil goes mainly to oil refineries
Natural-gas goes to natural-gas processing plants to remove contaminants such as water, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, and to adjust the heating value. It is used as fuel gas, also in thermal power stations.
Nuclear reaction heat is used in thermal power stations.
Biomass is used directly or converted to biofuel.

Electricity generators are driven by steam or gas turbines in a thermal plant, or water turbines in a hydropower station, or wind turbines, usually in a wind farm. The invention of the solar cell in 1954 started electricity generation by solar panels, connected to a power inverter. Mass production of panels around the year 2000 made this economic.

Energy trade

Much primary and converted energy is traded among countries. The table lists countries with large difference of export and import in 2021, expressed in Mtoe. A negative value indicates that much energy import is needed for the economy. Russian gas exports were reduced a lot in 2022, as pipelines to Asia plus LNG export capacity is much less than the gas no longer sent to Europe.
Transport of energy carriers is done by tanker ship, tank truck, LNG carrier, rail freight transport, pipeline and by electric power transmission.

Total energy supply

	TES	PE
China	3,650	2,950
India	927	615
Russia	811	1,516
Japan	400	52
South Korea	298	151
Canada	289	536
Germany	286	102
Saudi Arabia	219	610

Year	TES
1990	8,700
2000	9,900
2010	12,600
2019	14,400
2020	13,800
2021	14,500

Total energy supply indicates the sum of production and imports subtracting exports and storage changes. For the whole world TES nearly equals primary energy because imports and exports cancel out, but for countries TES and PE differ in quantity, and also in quality as secondary energy is involved, e.g., import of an oil refinery product. TES is all energy required to supply energy for end users.
The tables list TES and PE for some countries where these differ much, both in 2021 and TES history. Most growth of TES since 1990 occurred in Asia. The amounts are rounded and given in Mtoe. Enerdata labels TES as Total energy consumption.
25% of worldwide primary production is used for conversion and transport, and 6% for non-energy products like lubricants, asphalt and petrochemicals. In 2019 TES was 606 EJ and final consumption was 418 EJ, 69% of TES. Most of the energy lost by conversion occurs in thermal electricity plants and the energy industry own use.

Discussion about energy loss

There are different qualities of energy. Heat, especially at a relatively low temperature, is low-quality energy of random motion, whereas electricity is high-quality energy that flows smoothly through wires. It takes around 3 kWh of heat to produce 1 kWh of electricity. But by the same token, a kilowatt-hour of this high-quality electricity can be used to pump several kilowatt-hours of heat into a building using a heat pump. It turns out that the loss of useful energy incurred in thermal electricity plants is very much more than the loss due to, say, resistance in power lines, because of quality differences. Electricity can also be used in many ways in which heat cannot.
In fact, the loss in thermal plants is due to poor conversion of chemical energy of fuel to motion by combustion. Otherwise chemical energy of fuel is not inherently low-quality; for example, conversion of chemical energy to electricity in batteries can approach 100%. So energy loss in thermal plants is real loss.

Final consumption

Total final consumption is the worldwide consumption of energy by end-users or total energy supply. This energy consists of fuel and electricity. The tables list amounts, expressed in million tonnes of oil equivalent per year and how much of these is renewable energy. Non-energy products are not considered here. The data are of 2018. The world's renewable share of TFC was 18% in 2018: 7% traditional biomass, 3.6% hydropower and 7.4% other renewables.
In the period 2005–2017 worldwide final consumption of coal increased by 23%, of oil and gas increased by 18%, and that of electricity increased by 41%.
Fuel comes in three types: Fossil fuel is natural gas, fuel derived from petroleum, or from coal. Secondly, there is renewable fuel. And lastly, the fuel used for district heating.
The amounts of fuel in the tables are based on lower heating value.
The first table lists final consumption in the countries/regions which use most, and per person as of 2018. In developing countries fuel consumption per person is low and more renewable. Canada, Venezuela and Brazil generate most electricity with hydropower.

	Fuel Mtoe	of which renewable	Electricity Mtoe	of which renewable	TFC pp toe
China	1,436	6%	555	30%	1.4
United States	1,106	8%	339	19%	4.4
Europe	982	11%	309	39%	2.5
Africa	531	58%	57	23%	0.5
India	487	32%	104	25%	0.4
Russia	369	1%	65	26%	3.0
Japan	201	3%	81	19%	2.2
Brazil	166	38%	45	78%	1.0
Indonesia	126	21%	22	14%	0.6
Canada	139	8%	45	83%	5.0
Iran	147	0%	22	6%	2.1
Mexico	95	7%	25	18%	1.0
South Korea	85	5%	46	5%	2.6
Australia	60	7%	18	21%	3.2
Argentina	42	7%	11	27%	1.2
Venezuela	20	3%	6	88%	0.9
World	7050	14%	1970	30%	1.2

The next table shows countries consuming most in Europe.