This continent is set to use half of the world's electricity by 2025
Asia has been increasing its use of renewable electricity sources. Image: Unsplash/natsuki
- Asia will use half of the world's electricity by 2025, according to the International Energy Agency.
- China is the largest factor in this transformation, reports Statista.
- Asia has been increasing its use of renewable electricity sources, but still relies on coal-fired electricity in many places.
In the year 2025, countries in Asia will use half of the electricity in the world. According to the International Energy Agency, Asia's share of global electricity consumption has been rising quickly from just around a quarter in the year 2000. China is the biggest factor in this transformation. While in 2000, it used just 10 percent of the world's energy, that share is predicted to be up to 33 percent in 2025.
While Chinese population growth has now reversed, a rising standard of living is still driving rising electricity demand, for example in air conditioning. Other large countries in Asia are expected to be growing in population until the second half of the current century, meaning even more demand for electricity as these nations are growing in the number of their people and the progress of their development. Asia has been increasing its use of renewable electricity sources but, in part because of its giant demand, also relies on coal-fired electricity in many places. China, for example, has hugely grown both electricity sources in tandem.
Despite the ongoing construction in coal-power plants, emissions caused in China are expected to begin falling soon while remaining on a high level. Because of their different developmental timelines, emissions from other Asian nations are expected to keep rising. However, their individual share in Asian emissions is much smaller to be begin with.
What's the World Economic Forum doing about the transition to clean energy?
Don't miss any update on this topic
Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.
License and Republishing
World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
Stay up to date:
Electricity
The Agenda Weekly
A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda
You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.
More on Energy TransitionSee all
Maciej Kolaczkowski and Debmalya Sen
November 22, 2024