# Energy, the economy and the future: Energy and human welfare Source page: https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/energy-economy-society/p2/ [Understanding Energy](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/) / [Module 14: Energy, the economy and the future](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/energy-economy-society/) Part 2 of 4 ## Energy and human welfare How much energy does a good life need? The evidence shows large gains in health and education as energy use rises from very low levels, and almost none beyond a moderate threshold. That makes energy poverty the most pressing energy problem for billions of people, and it puts India, with low use per person and fast growth, at the centre of the story. ### 2.1 Quality of life rises steeply with energy use, then levels off Smil compared energy use per person with indicators of well-being across countries: infant mortality, life expectancy, schooling and the UN Human Development Index. The pattern is consistent. Below about 40 to 50 GJ per person a year, each extra unit of energy brings large improvements in nutrition, health and education. At about 60 to 65 GJ, societies can reach infant mortality below 20 per 1,000 live births, female life expectancy above 75 years and an HDI above 0.8. The best outcomes, with infant mortality below 10, female life expectancy above 80 and an HDI above 0.9, appear at roughly 110 GJ per person. Above that there are no further measurable gains. The world average is now a little over 70 GJ per person, using the Energy Institute's 2024 total of 592 EJ and a population of just over 8 billion. That average hides a range of more than ten to one. The United States uses roughly 270 GJ per person, while Japan and the larger European economies, with equal or better health and longevity, use about half as much. India uses about 27 GJ of commercial energy per person, and Africa as a whole about 14. Smil regards infant mortality as the best single indicator of quality of life, because it reflects at once the state of nutrition, clean water, sanitation, health care, female education and income. Surveys of life satisfaction tell a similar story: happiness does not keep rising with energy use, and some countries of modest income score as high as much richer ones. The implication is moral as much as technical. Hundreds of millions of people need much more energy to reach a decent standard of living, and the climate problem cannot be solved by asking them to stay poor. Meanwhile the richest countries could use far less without any loss of well-being. A credible global transition has to allow energy use to grow in India and Africa while it falls in North America and Europe. Data Energy use per person, 2024 (approximate) | Country or region | Primary energy per person | Compared with Smil's thresholds | |---|---|---| | United States | about 270 GJ | far above the 110 GJ level of best outcomes | | Japan and large EU economies | roughly half the US level | close to or above 110 GJ | | China | about 112 GJ | around 110 GJ, up from under 30 GJ in 1980 | | World average | about 72 GJ (calculated) | just above the 60 to 65 GJ range | | India | about 27 GJ | below the 40 to 50 GJ zone of steep gains | | Africa | about 14 GJ | far below every threshold | Rounded values from the Energy Institute's 2025 Statistical Review, which counts wind, solar and hydro at their physical energy content, so figures are lower than in older editions. The world average is 592 EJ divided by about 8.2 billion people. Traditional biomass is excluded; it adds substantially to household energy in India and Africa but delivers little useful energy. Source: Planète Énergies, 'World energy consumption in 2024' (2025), per-person primary energy by region from the Energy Institute Statistical Review 2025, https://www.planete-energies.com/en/media/figures/world-energy-consumption-2019 Worked example #### What Smil's thresholds imply for India India uses under 30 GJ of commercial energy per person, below even the 40 to 50 GJ range where gains are steepest. Bringing about 1.45 billion people up to 60 to 65 GJ, the level Smil links with an HDI above 0.8, would add roughly 50 EJ a year to India's demand, close to the entire current energy use of the European Union. Even with far better efficiency than today's rich countries achieved, India's energy use has to grow a great deal. The question is what that energy will be made from, not whether it will be needed. - Smil, Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties (2003) · via Smil Mastery Course, M13 'Energy and the quality of life' - Smil, Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World (2020) · via Smil Mastery Course, M13 'Energy and the quality of life' - Smil, How the World Really Works: A Scientist's Guide to Our Past, Present and Future (2022) · via Smil Mastery Course, M13 'Energy and the quality of life' - Energy Institute, Statistical Review of World Energy 2025 (2025) [web ↗](https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review) · 2024 world primary energy of 592 EJ and country totals, https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review; per-person values are rounded calculations using UN population estimates - Planète Énergies, 'World energy consumption in 2024' (2025) · per-person primary energy by region from the Energy Institute Statistical Review 2025, https://www.planete-energies.com/en/media/figures/world-energy-consumption-2019 ### 2.2 Billions still live in a low-energy world In 1980, when rich countries were preoccupied with oil prices, Smil and William Knowland edited a volume arguing that the real energy crisis lay elsewhere: in the poor countries where most people lived. At the time about a quarter of humanity used four-fifths of the world's fossil fuels and electricity. The other three-quarters relied largely on wood, crop residues and dung for cooking and heating, and on human and animal muscle for farm work and transport, with poor diets and high infant mortality to match. Much has changed. China lifted hundreds of millions of people out of that world within a generation, and India connected almost all its villages and households to the grid in the 2010s. But the problem has not gone away. The IEA counts about 730 million people still without electricity and nearly 2 billion who cook with polluting fuels such as wood, charcoal, dung and kerosene. Most of those without power now live in sub-Saharan Africa. Smoke from traditional stoves is one of the largest environmental health risks in the world, and it falls hardest on women and small children. Rural energy is the hardest part. Extending grids to scattered villages is expensive per connection, poor households can afford little electricity, and a connection that delivers power for only a few hours a day does little for a workshop or a clinic. Smil's survey of country experiments, from India's biogas programmes to Brazil's sugarcane ethanol and China's small hydro stations, found mixed results. Technologies that worked in demonstrations often failed in daily use because of poor construction, maintenance and supply chains. Two things are different today. Cheap solar panels, batteries and efficient appliances have made mini-grids and solar home systems a realistic first step to electricity, without waiting for the main grid. And India's Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, launched in May 2016, had given about 85 million poor households a free liquefied petroleum gas connection by late 2021, although the cost of refills still pushes some back to wood. Value chain The household energy ladder - **Household energy for cooking, heat and light** - **Traditional** low efficiency, heavy smoke - **Firewood** - **Crop residues** - **Dung cakes** - **Transitional** cleaner but still polluting - **Charcoal** - **Kerosene** - **Coal briquettes** - **Modern** clean at the point of use - **LPG and piped gas** - **Biogas** - **Grid or solar electricity, including induction cooking** Households often use several rungs at once, switching with price and season. Source: Smil, Energy in the Developing World: The Real Energy Crisis (ed. with W. Knowland, 1980), via Smil Mastery Course, M13 'Energy in the developing world' Case #### China's biogas lesson In the 1970s China built millions of small biogas digesters, pits in which animal dung and crop waste ferment to produce methane for cooking and lighting. The campaign was hailed abroad as a model for poor countries. Smil documented that many digesters soon failed: they were badly built, leaked gas, were not fed regularly, or produced too little in cold winters. The idea was sound, and well-run digesters still work, but a technology spread by campaign without skills, maintenance and a reason for households to keep it running rarely lasts. - Smil, Energy in the Developing World: The Real Energy Crisis (ed. with W. Knowland, 1980) · via Smil Mastery Course, M13 'Energy in the developing world' - Smil, Energy in China's Modernization: Advances and Limitations (1988) · via Smil Mastery Course, M13 'Energy in the developing world' - Smil, Energy and Civilization: A History (2017) · via Smil Mastery Course, M13 'Energy in the developing world' - IEA, World Energy Outlook 2025 (2025) · Overview and key findings, https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2025/overview-and-key-findings - Press Information Bureau, Government of India, 'Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana' factsheet (2021) · launch on 1 May 2016 and 8.48 crore connections by 20 October 2021, https://www.pib.gov.in/FactsheetDetails.aspx?Id=148555 ### 2.3 India is where the next decades of energy growth will be decided India is the world's most populous country, already the third-largest single-country energy consumer after China and the United States, and one of the fastest-growing major economies. Yet it uses under 30 GJ of commercial energy per person, well under half the world average. Those two facts together explain why the IEA has put India at the centre of future energy demand in every recent outlook. The IEA's India Energy Outlook 2021 expected India to account for about a quarter of the growth in world energy demand over the following two decades, the largest share of any country, and to overtake the European Union as the third-largest energy consumer by 2030. Its World Energy Outlook 2024 projected Indian energy demand to rise by nearly 35% by 2035, with steel output up about 70%, cement nearly 55%, generating capacity roughly tripling to about 1,400 GW, and the number of air conditioners rising more than four and a half times. The 2025 Outlook again names India, with Southeast Asia, as the leading source of demand growth. The fuel picture is mixed. Coal supplied about three-quarters of India's electricity in 2023-24. The 2021 Outlook put India's net oil import dependence at about 75%, rising above 90% by 2040 without major change, and its gas import dependence at nearly half. At the same time India has become one of the largest solar markets in the world. In 2025, according to Ember, its renewable generation rose by a record 24% and its fossil generation fell. For an investor, the key point is that India's transition is mostly about building, not replacing. Most of the steel mills, cement plants, buildings, cooling systems, vehicles and power plants that India will use in 2050 do not exist yet. Choices made in the next ten to fifteen years, coal or solar, blast furnace or hydrogen-ready direct reduction, efficient or inefficient air conditioners, will fix India's emissions and its import bill for decades. Data India's energy position in IEA outlooks | Indicator | Value | Source | |---|---|---| | Share of world energy demand growth to about 2040 | about a quarter | India Energy Outlook 2021 | | Energy demand growth to 2035 | nearly 35% | World Energy Outlook 2024 | | Steel and cement output growth to 2035 | about 70% and nearly 55% | World Energy Outlook 2024 | | Generating capacity in 2035 | about 1,400 GW, roughly triple | World Energy Outlook 2024 | | Coal share of electricity, 2023-24 | about 75% | World Energy Outlook 2024 | | Net oil import dependence | about 75%, above 90% by 2040 | India Energy Outlook 2021 | | Renewable generation growth, 2025 | +24% (Ember) | Ember Global Electricity Review 2026 | Source: IEA, India Energy Outlook 2021 (2021), key findings as summarised by Drishti IAS, 18 February 2021, https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/india-energy-outlook-2021-iea/print_manually In the data #### Cooling: India's fastest-growing electricity load In its 2024 outlook the IEA projected that India's stock of air conditioners would grow more than four and a half times by 2035, and that their electricity use would then exceed the total expected electricity consumption of Mexico. Cooling demand peaks on hot afternoons and evenings, which shapes when India needs power and how much storage pairs with its solar. Because an efficient air conditioner can use around half the electricity of an inefficient one for the same cooling, appliance standards are among the cheapest supply sources India has. - IEA, India Energy Outlook 2021 (2021) · key findings as summarised by Drishti IAS, 18 February 2021, https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/india-energy-outlook-2021-iea/print_manually - IEA, World Energy Outlook 2024 (2024), India findings as reported by PTI · Outlook Business, 17 October 2024, https://www.outlookbusiness.com/sustainability/india-set-to-lead-global-energy-demand-growth-coal-will-remain-central-iea - IEA, World Energy Outlook 2025 (2025) · Overview and key findings, https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2025/overview-and-key-findings - Ember, Global Electricity Review 2026 (April 2026) · 2025 data, https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2026/ and https://ember-energy.org/chapter/2025-in-review/ - Energy Institute, Statistical Review of World Energy 2025 (2025) [web ↗](https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review) · 2024 world primary energy of 592 EJ and country totals, https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review; per-person values are rounded calculations using UN population estimates ### See it in the table [H₂O Water](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/water/)[St Steel](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/steel/)[Cem Cement](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/cement/)[H2 Hydrogen](https://www.materialinsights.org/chemicals/hydrogen/) ### Check your understanding At roughly what level of energy use per person did Smil find the best outcomes in health and human development, beyond which there were no further gains? Infant mortality below 10, female life expectancy above 80 and an HDI above 0.9 appear at about 110 GJ; the US uses far more with no better results. Why does Smil treat infant mortality as the best single indicator of quality of life? Babies survive when many conditions are right together, so the rate summarises a society's basic welfare. What share of the growth in world energy demand did the IEA's India Energy Outlook 2021 expect India to account for over two decades? About 25%, the largest of any country, reflecting low use per person and fast growth. [← Part 1: Energy and the economy](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/energy-economy-society/p1/)[Mark read · Part 3: Energy, war and security →](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/energy-economy-society/p3/) ## Other sections - [Module overview](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/energy-economy-society/index.md) - [Energy and the economy](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/energy-economy-society/p1/index.md) - [Energy, war and security](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/energy-economy-society/p3/index.md) - [Growth, forecasts and the future](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/energy-economy-society/p4/index.md) - [Key terms, quiz and sources](https://www.materialinsights.org/learn/energy/energy-economy-society/review/index.md)