Bid to slash energy waste in Brazil, China and India

With world energy prices and climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions ballooning in tandem with a surge in energy demand from the hot economies of China, India and Brazil, the world has a major stake in the success of energy reduction efforts, particularly in those three countries, warn experts concluding a four-year international project.

Without significant gains from energy efficiency efforts, China, India and Brazil within a single human generation (by 2030) will more than double their energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in major impacts on global energy markets and climate. However, experts estimate that cost-effective retrofits could reduce those countries’ energy use today by at least 25% and advanced technologies could reduce their energy use growth projected through 2030 by at least 10% (and reduce projected CO2 emission growth by 16%).

China, India and Brazil, already rank among the world’s top 10 energy consumers with astonishing economic growth rates nearing 10 % per year; they are on track to becoming the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters. Although today they emit just 10% as much greenhouse gas per capita as North America, their national emissions are rising far faster. China’s emissions, for instance, are expected to double by 2020, in which case China will surpass the US as the leading source of climate-altering gases. By one estimate, the China power market will require an average 48 gigawatts of new capacity every year, equal to two-thirds of the UK’s total installed capacity.

Global GDP is projected to more than double by 2030, 80% of that growth accounted for by non-OECD countries, where current energy intensity of GDP (expressed as barrels of oil equivalent—BOE—per $1,000 of GDP) was approximately three times that of the OECD countries in 2005. Without gains in energy efficiency, such global GDP growth would raise daily global energy demand from 205 million BOE today to more than 500 million BOE by 2030.

OneWorld