Electricity Demand will Double

The energy transition will all be around #electricity and by 2050 electricity demand will double. A bold statement. How do we get to this conclusion?

Step One: How much ENERGY will we need in the future?

There are many scenarios about energy consumption: The selection of studies in the figure below shows the total energy demand in Europe and the trajectories until 2030 or even until 2050. Today we use approximately 13.000 TWh in Europe in total – across all energy carriers and all sectors. And especially the more recent scenarios show that we will use less energy. If we want to keep our standard of living, we will have to become more efficient. We can go down to 10.000 TWh or even less by 2050. Do not worry what 'TWh' means, the point is that the scenarios predict that about 30 % of today's energy use can be saved, and that is a lot.

Step two: How much ELECTRICITY will we use in the future?

Here are trajectories of how much energy we might use in the future. Now it becomes really interesting: all studies show an increase of electricity use in regard to other energy carriers - see the figure below. One scenario is quite different from the other ones, it is the five year old “EU reference scenario 2016” (please note it is an old scenario included to show the development, the EC published new ones like the EUCO3232.5). If you look in the figure above (EU total energy demand, top blue line) you see that there is almost no decline in energy demand in this old scenario and at the same time the increase of electrification is low. Now we look at the other extreme: the Eurelectric scenario (orange line) has a steep increase in efficiency with the highest electrification rate. 

Conclusion

The more electricity is used, the more efficient the total energy system will become.

I stated before (and will say it again): The energy transition will all be around #electricity: electric applications are efficient and renewable electric energy is available in great but eventually limited capacity. 

That is why the energy transition will be a transition towards electricity with more electric transport, electric heating and electric industrial processes combined with a significant increase of renewable electricity generation. Today about 22 % of the total energy consumption in Europe is electricity. Looking at the different scenarios the 2050 electricity share might be in the range of 40 to 60 % - not even looking at the extremes.

Consequently, it is very likely that the electric energy demand will about double. Wooow.

Personal Note: It is great to be an electrical engineer in a sector where you experience enormous growth rates and a further increase is expected in the years to come. At the same time there are sooo many implementation challenges that keep us busy and engaged. Life is great.  

Further Reading: You can read about the different factors that will influence the Energy World in 2050 in my article How will the world look in 2050. ENTSO-E and ENTSOG just published their Scenarios Report - a good glimpse of possible futures.