Page 12 - Fundamentals of Ocean Renewable Energy Generating Electricity From The Sea

4 Fundamentals of Ocean Renewable Energy

FIG. 1.3 Electricity consumption per capita per country plotted against Human Development
Index (HDI) in 2013. (Electricity data from the World Bank, and HDI data from the United Nations
Development Programme.)

having almost half of the electricity consumption per capita, but observe that
the relationship of electricity consumption per capita between the United States
and India is reflected in the HDI.
Take a look at the image of Earth’s city lights in Fig. 1.4, based on
satellite data processed by NASA. The countries and continents of the world
can generally be recognized in the image, because populations tend to be
concentrated close to coastlines. The US highway network and the connected
cities are very prominent in the image. Similarly, Europe, Japan, and many other
countries are brightly lit, but so too is India. The brightest areas of the Earth are
the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated.
Recently, around 1.2 billion people (around 16% of the world’s population)
do not have access to electricity [2]. This figure has reduced in the last two
decades, mainly as a result of increased urbanization. Modern energy services
are crucial to human well-being, and to a country’s economic development.
Access to electricity is essential for the provision of reliable and efficient
lighting, heating, cooking, mechanical power, telecommunications, and, in part,
transport services.
Snapshots of the global electricity mix for 1973 and 2015 are shown in
Fig. 1.5. The main change over these four decades has been a reduction on the
reliance of oil for generating electricity (−21%), and this generation has been
displaced in the energy mix by an increased share of natural gas (+10%) and
nuclear (+8%). Interestingly, the global share of renewable energy generation
remained the same (22%) between these two time slices, but the percentage