It's Going To Get Hot In Here

There's good news and bad news on projections of global energy use in the next 25 years.  The good news is that while energy consumption is expected to rise 53 percent by 2035, carbon emissions will be less than that.  The bad news is by "less than that" I still mean carbon emissions will rise by 43 percent by 2035.

The world is going to burn through 53 percent more energy by 2035, and despite all the hype surrounding renewable energy, much of that will still come from fossil fuels, according to a new annual report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The EIA projects with its new report that total world energy use will rise to a mind-boggling 770 quadrillion Btu in 2035, up from 505 quadrillion Btu in 2008.

"In 2008, China and India combined accounted for 21 percent of total world energy consumption," according to a press statement that came out with the key findings of the International Energy Outlook 2011 on Monday.

"With strong economic growth in both countries over the projection period, their combined energy use more than doubles by 2035, when they account for 31 percent of world energy use in the IEO2011 Reference case. In 2035, China's energy demand is 68 percent higher than the U.S. energy demand."

And the bad news is this chart here:



In other words, by 2035 we're going to be using enough coal and natural gas globally to generate the same amount of electricity as we need now in total from all sources. That's not good. And something tells me 25 years from now will be far too late to do much of anything about saving the planet.