I came across this table via Worlds fair on scienceblogs.com

From Nocera (2006) “The Future of Global Energy,” in Daedalus

So what that means basically is that we in the the world use about 13TW (terra Watts ) of electricity a year. If by 2050 the whole world has the standard of living of Poland now we will use 25 TW if the standard of living of Western Europe 45.5 TW and of the USA 102TW. So considering by that time oil will be running out where is the energy going to come from. renewables? Nuclear?The same paper detailed this as well. From Reason Magazine.

 

So where will the extra energy come from? Relying on figures from the World Energy Assessment by the United Nations Development Program, Nocera looks at the maximum amounts of power that various non-fossil fuel sources might supply. Biomass could supply 7-10 TW of energy, but that is the equivalent of harvesting all current crops solely for energy. Nuclear could produce 8 TW which implies building 8000 new reactors over the 45 years at a rate of one new plant every two days. Wind would generate 2.1 TW if every site on the globe with class 3 winds or greater were occupied with windmills. Winds at a class 3 site blow at 11.5 miles per hour at 33 feet above the ground. And hydro-power could produce 0.7-2 TW if dams were placed on every untapped river on the earth. Nocera concludes, “The message is clear. The additional energy we need in 2050 over the current 13.5 TW base, is simply not attainable from long discussed sources—the global appetite for energy is simply too great.”

In 2000, author Richard Rhodes and nuclear engineer Denis Beller calculated that using current solar power technologies to construct a global solar-energy system would consume at least 20 percent of the world’s known iron resources, take a century to build and cover a half-million square miles [ed. that is 19 times the size of Ireland or 1/7th the size of the Sahara desert.]

Scary isn’t it. We are basically heading down the road to no energy. As Tuathal said earlier to me “damn you scientists…crack fusion for crissake.” To solve this problem two things are need conservation and innovation.

The market can provide both. If the price of energy goes up people will start looking for more and more energy efficient appliances and devices. This can be seen in the recent decline in SUV sales in the US with high oil prices. But also a non free market thing is need and that is the governments to start increasing taxes on energy forcing the issue. I worth before that Carbon Tax was wrong as it is a regressive tax and hurts the poor the most. But maybe that is off lesser concern.Coupled together with higher energy prices research into alternatives would gather pace and perhaps save us. That are we better hope the rest of the world starts going backwards. Of course these trend in energy use might not keep going up but it is not something I think we should take a wait and see approach.