Global Energy Use: Decoupling or Convergence?

We examine the key factors driving change in energy use globally over the past four decades. Our econometric approach is robust to the presence of unit roots, unobserved time effects, and spatial effects. We test for both strong decoupling where economic growth has less effect on energy use as income increases, and weak decoupling where energy use declines over time in richer countries, ceteris paribus. Our key findings are that the growth of per capita energy use has been primarily driven by economic growth, convergence in energy intensity, and weak decoupling. There is no sign of strong decoupling.