The release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is considered the main cause of global warming, is directly related to energy consumption. In this paper, the energy consumption is analyzed as the product of population and energy consumption per capita. Urbanization, a demographic phenomenon remarkable in developing countries, is also a focus of this study.
As the whole world, the annual increase in population registered 1.7 percent from 1980 to 1993, while energy consumption per capita for the same period grew at the annual rate of no more than 0.3 percent. However, data for many countries with large populations, including China and India, indicate greater increase in energy consumption per capita than the increase in population.
There is positive correlation between proportion of the urban population and the logarithm of energy consumption per capita when cross-national data are employed for the years 1980 and 1993. That may imply that the level of economic development simultaneously determines the proportion of the urban population and the energy consumption per capita. It is also important to note the possibility that the proportion of the urban population determines the energy consumption per capita. If the latter is the case, there must be difference in energy consumption per capita between urban and rural areas.
China, the country with the largest population, is examined in detail. In 1990, average energy consumption per capita for Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai was 3.1 times the average for the rest of the country. Nevertheless, since the proportion of the total population living in the three cities has declined from 1986 to 1990, it seems that the growth of other cities and/or the emergence of new ones are pushing up energy consumption in China as a whole.