In this paper we use the long-term empirical relationship among primary energy consumption, real income, physical capital, population and technology, obtained by averaged panel error correction models, to project the long-term primary energy consumption of 56 countries up to 2100. In forecasting long-term primary energy consumption, we work with four different Shared Socioeconomic Pathway Scenarios (SSPs) developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) framework, assuming different challenges to adaptation and mitigation. We find that in all scenarios, China, the United States and India will be the largest energy consumers, while highly growing countries will also significantly contribute to energy use. We observe for most scenarios a sharp increase in global energy consumption, followed by a levelling-out and a decrease towards the second half of the century. The reasons behind this pattern are not only slower population growth, but also infrastructure saturation and increased total factor productivity. This means, as countries move towards more knowledge based societies, and higher energy efficiency, their primary energy usage is likely to decrease as a result. Global primary energy consumption is expected however to increase significantly in the coming decades, thus increasing the pressure on policy makers to cope with the questions of energy security and greenhouse gas mitigation at the same time.
