>If you hope for a world where the non-US population reaches the same life standard as the US, you need to increase the energy production by this factor.
I think this is a mistake - the US is energy wasteful compared to places like Europe which has a similar standard of living.
There is a strong emphasis on energy efficiency in Europe, plus higher density living meaning more efficient transport etc.
In the [1] wiki page you quoted it shows that the US is ~2 fold worse at energy efficiency than leading European countries and the trend in Europe is to be increasingly efficient.
If you build in energy efficiency during the development of countries, in theory the savings could be even greater.
In terms of US quality of life, it's not just energy consumption that drives it, it's available natural resources and the hegemony of the dollar in world markets.
ie there are large contributions from other factors to US GDP that you can't match by increasing energy use - ie the real underlying US productivity per energy unit is even worse that it appears.
In summary the US is a bit of an outlier not a benchmark.
Finally - obviously the original story is in the context of UK supply - not world - so there was some misunderstanding on what your numbers applied to.
I think this is a mistake - the US is energy wasteful compared to places like Europe which has a similar standard of living.
There is a strong emphasis on energy efficiency in Europe, plus higher density living meaning more efficient transport etc.
In the [1] wiki page you quoted it shows that the US is ~2 fold worse at energy efficiency than leading European countries and the trend in Europe is to be increasingly efficient.
If you build in energy efficiency during the development of countries, in theory the savings could be even greater.
In terms of US quality of life, it's not just energy consumption that drives it, it's available natural resources and the hegemony of the dollar in world markets.
ie there are large contributions from other factors to US GDP that you can't match by increasing energy use - ie the real underlying US productivity per energy unit is even worse that it appears.
In summary the US is a bit of an outlier not a benchmark.
Finally - obviously the original story is in the context of UK supply - not world - so there was some misunderstanding on what your numbers applied to.