World population reached 6.1 billion in mid-2000 and is currently growing at an annual rate of 1.2 percent, or 77 million people a year. By the year 2020, the United Nations estimates there could be as many as eight billion people on Earth. Fully half of the projected growth in energy demand will occur in tandem with strong economic growth in the developing nations of Asia including China, India, and South Korea, and in Central and South America, according to the report. Persistently high world oil prices in 2000 and stronger than anticipated economic recovery in southeast Asia shaped the mid-term outlook for world energy use. Another factor is strong economic growth in the Russian Federation that has been sustained for two consecutive years - the first time this has occurred since the collapse of the Soviet regime.
People hurry along the busy streets of Moscow.
High world oil prices and improved domestic industrial production helped Russia to record its second year of positive economic growth. The improved economic outlook for Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union leads to a prediction of a 42 percent increase in energy consumption in the region between 1999 and 2020. Energy use in China, the world's most populous country, is projected to grow by 4.7 percent per year. But China's energy use slowed between 1997 and 1999, so the EIA has lowered its prediction of Chinese energy use in 2020 by nearly 14 percent from last year's forecast. Chinese use of coal decreased between 1997 and 1999 in part because of the closing of many inefficient and unprofitable small coal mines, the EIA said.