World Energy Use 2016

Energy is the basis of the world economy and the use of fossil fuels to produce energy releases greenhouse gases. So lets take a look at energy consumed world wide. According to data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy (published annually) and the U.S. Energy Information Agency world consumption of fuel for energy production (as measured in millions of tonnes of oil equivalents) has increased by about 50% over the last 20 years. The good news is that over that time renewables have increased from less than 1% to 3.2% of the energy produced. In 2016 hydro-electricity, nuclear power and renewable sources accounted for 14.5% of the energy consumed and these sources produce no greenhouse gases. Take a look at the world and then a more granular look at the energy used in some countries.

from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016

As you can see above the use of all types of energy with the exception of nuclear has continued to grow year after year. 

Energy use in the United States, the Russian Federation and Europe appears to have leveled off and even decreased a bit over the past decade. Take a look at the relative size of the nations in terms of energy consumed. 

China has the largest absolute amount of renewables and hydro-electric sources of energy, but they are so much larger an energy user than any other country, representing 23.3% of the energy used globally that  taking a look at the percentages tells another story.

As you can see above Germany has the largest percentage of energy consumed in the country coming from renewables followed by the United Kingdom and Brazil. France has the highest percentage of energy consumed produced by nuclear power; and Canada and Brazil get more than a quarter of their energy from hydro-electricity. China gets more than 60% of the energy from coal and India gets more than 56% of their energy from coal. The oil producing nations and the car centric western nations all get huge amounts of energy from oil.