World Final Energy Old

Updated June 2023.

Final energy accounts for the consumption of fuels in their final forms. Importantly, this includes fuels consumed for purposes other than the generation of electricity (see the introduction for further information).

Chart 1. World final energy by annual share of fuel for the most recent year of respective dataset. Data: IEA(2022)1. Electricity generation data: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 20222 3 4. The area of each upper pie chart is proportional to the total quantity of energy consumed for the respective year.
Hydrogen (H₂) consumption is not shown although perhaps it’s tallied in the “Heat” segment of the top-most pie charts. This isn’t explained in the IEA’s definitions 5, nor do their definitions reference hydrogen.
H₂ “demand” in 2020 was 89Mt 6. At the rated energy content of 120 MJ/kg 7, this was equivalent to 2.7% of world total final energy in 2020.
Low-emission hydrogen was less than 1% of global hydrogen production in 2021 6, equivalent to 0.027% of world final energy in 2020 (roughly one fortieth of one percent).

Note how little has changed since 1990, except for the increase in annual energy consumption.

Decarbonisation requires a much greater share of electricity. Over 30 years and 26 UN climate conferences, that share grew from only 13.4% to 20.5%.

Note that while shares of low carbon electricity generation increased from 30.5% in 2010 to 35% in 2021, the share in 1990 was 34.8%. This is explained by chart 4 in World Electricity Generation.

IEA data is used to display final energy, the most recent year of which is 20208. BP data2 is unsuitable for final energy accounting, but is used to display electricity generation, the most recent year of which is 2021.

Footnotes
  1. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-product/world-energy-balances-highlights(↩)
  2. https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html(↩)(↩)
  3. BP does not fully account for biofuels, and these may not be carbon-neutral, as explained at https://www.worldenergydata.org/biofuels/(↩)
  4. Biofuels on this website are the summation of solid and liquid biofuels, and therefore Geothermal, Biofuels and Other equals the summation of BP’s data for ‘Geo, Biomass and Other’ and ‘Biofuels’.(↩)
  5. https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/25266100-859c-4b9c-bd46-cc4069bd4412/WORLDBAL_Documentation.pdf(↩)
  6. https://www.iea.org/reports/hydrogen(↩)(↩)
  7. https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-storage(↩)
  8. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-product/world-energy-balances-highlights(↩)