By country

See also: Energy by country and List of countries by energy consumption per capita

Energy consumption is loosely correlated with gross national product, but there is a large difference even between the most highly developed countries, such as Japan and Germany with 6 kW per person and United States with 11.4 kW per person. In developing countries such as India the per person energy use is closer to 0.7 kW. Bangladesh has the lowest consumption with 0.2 kW per person.

The US consumes 25% of the world's energy with a share of global GDP at 22% and a share of the world population at 5%. The most significant growth of energy consumption is currently taking place in China, which has been growing at 5.5% per year over the last 25 years. Its population of 1.3 billion people (20% of the world population) is consuming energy at a rate of 1.6 kW per person.

Over the past four years, electricity consumption per capita in the U.S. has decreased about 1% per year between 2004 and 2008. Power consumption is projected to hit 4,333,631 million kilowatt hours by 2013, an annual growth rate of 1.93% for the next five years. Consumption increased from 3,715,949 in 2004 to an expected 3,937,879 million kilowatt hours per year in 2008, an increase of about 1.5% per year. The rate of increase has been steadily decreasing - it was 2.5% in the 1990s.^[31] U.S. population has been increasing about 1.3% per year, a total increase of about 6.7% over five years.^[32] The decrease has been mostly due to efficiency increases. Compact fluorescent bulbs, for example use about one third as much electricity as incandescents. LED bulbs, however, use about one tenth as much, and over their 50,000 to 100,000 hour lifetime are cheaper than compact fluorescents.

One metric of efficiency is energy intensity. This is a measure of the amount of energy it takes a country to produce a dollar of gross domestic product.

By sector

Industrial users (agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and construction) consume about 37% of the total 15 TW. Personal and commercial transportation consumes 20%; residential heating, lighting, and appliances use 11%; and commercial uses (lighting, heating and cooling of commercial buildings, and provision of water and sewer services) amount to 5% of the total. ^[33]

The other 27% of the world's energy is lost in energy transmission and generation. In 2005, global electricity consumption averaged 2 TW. The energy rate used to generate 2 TW of electricity is approximately 5 TW, as the efficiency of a typical existing power plant is around 38%.^[34] The new generation of gas-fired plants reaches a substantially higher efficiency of 55%. Coal is the most common fuel for the world's electricity plants