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Sudhanshu Ranade

Chennai , Sept. 1

ACCORDING to data made available by the International Energy Association, residential energy consumption for purposes other than transport accounted for 50 per cent of the two billion tonnes of oil equivalent that were consumed worldwide in 2001, over and above the 5.6 billion tonnes of oil equivalent consumed in 1990.

There was a major difference in this aspect between developed countries and the developing ones. In the US, for instance, energy consumed for residential purposes accounted for less than 20 per cent of the increased energy consumption over the period. The figure for China was 67.2 per cent, while in India, residential consumption of energy accounted for 72.5 per cent of the total increase in the consumption of energy.

The per capita residential energy consumption in the US was about 184 per cent higher than in China, which in turn was about 50 per cent higher than Indian levels. This implies that as the catching up of residential energy consumption continues, increased energy consumption in India for all sectors combined (222 per cent between 1990 and 2001) and to some extent in China (up 63 per cent over the period) can be expected to simply go through the roof.

Countries such as India and China consume much more energy per unit of gross domestic product than the developed countries. This is hardly surprising; they are at very different levels of development. However, non-residential energy consumption in India increased by 77 per cent between 1990 and 2001, as compared to a mere 26 per cent in China.

After all, the Chinese economy has been growing much faster than India, and there has been a dramatic increase in the share of the services sector in the Indian economy compared to China.

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