Graph of the Day: Global economic growth and energy consumption growth, 1991-2017
By Dr. Minqi Li
28 June 2018(Peak Oil Barrel) – This figure compares the historical world economic growth rates and the primary energy consumption growth rates from 1991 to 2017. The primary energy consumption growth rate has an intercept of -0.012 at zero economic growth rate and a slope of 0.914. That is, primary energy consumption has an “autonomous” tendency to fall by about 1.2 percent a year when economic growth rate is zero. When economic growth rate rises above zero, an increase in economic growth rate by one percentage point is associated with an increase in primary energy consumption by 0.91 percent. R-square for the linear trend is 0.75.
In 2017, world primary energy consumption grew by 1.9 percent, a rate that is 0.4 percentage points below what is implied by the historical trend. The linear trend in Primary Energy Consumption Growth Rate = -0.012 + 0.914 * Economic Growth Rate (R-squared = 0.751).[cf. World Energy Consumption and Economic Growth, 1991-2015. What this means is that there’s no evidence that global economic activity has “decoupled” from carbon emissions. The data point for 2017 is almost exactly on the the trend line, which hasn’t deflected noticeably since the last post in 2015. –Des]
