Energy Intensity 1970-2023

The energy intensity of an economy is the total amount of energy consumed per unit of economic output, usually measured as GDP.

The units for energy intensity as used on this page are exajoules/billion US dollars.

High energy intensity means the economy is not energy efficient (usually the case in more affluent countries, especially ones where energy is abundant and relatively cheap like the USA) and low energy intensity means the economy has a lower cost for converting energy to economic ouput.

Overall, the world's energy intensity (the magenta line in the following chart) has decreased dramatically from around 70 EJ/$T to 6 EJ/$T in the period 1970 to 2023, which indicates that the conversion of energy to economic output has improved over time.

This chart shows the energy intensity for 50-odd countries for which we have data, all at the same scale in grey, as at 2023, with the overall world EI in magenta (pink).

We see that almost every country in this sample has improved their energy efficiency over the last half century.

The spike in the middle (going off the chart) is Iraq, which had a collapse in GDP after the 8 years war with Iran in the 1980s, then the defeat after invading Kuwait in 1990.

The rest of this page shows the changes in energy intensity for various countries throughout the last half century. In most countries, energy intensity has shown a steady improvement, while in others the peak energy intensity was reached in the 1990s, and has declined since then.

This analysis contains only the 63 countries that have reported on energy consumption and GDP for the full period. It includes the major polluters - China, US, India, Russia, Japan, and Indonesia.

The units (energy intensity, or EI) on the vertical axis of each chart are in exajoules/trillion US dollars.

For example, in 2021 the USA consumed 92.4 EJ of energy, and the size of its GDP was 23.315 trillion US$, giving us an Energy Intensity of 92.418/23.315 = 3.964 EJ/$T.

One exajoule (EJ, or 10¹⁸ J) is approximately the amount of energy currently used by Israel or Greece in a year. It is equivalent to 277.778 terawatt hours. Current world consumption is around 600 EJ per year.

NOTE 1: As you hover over the charts, you'll see the EI for each year. On a phone, drag across the charts.

NOTE 2: The vertical scale is set for each chart so the EI shows for all years.