Today the International Energy Agency (IEA) said world energy demand is projected to rise by 40% between now and 2030, reaching 16.8 billion tons of oil equivalents. Oil demand is expected to grow by 1% per year on average over the projection period, from 85 million barrels per day in 2008 to 105 million barrels a day in 2030.

Global energy use will decline this year because of the global economic crisis, but it will soon resume an upward trend if government policies don’t change. In last year’s outlook, the IEA had projected 2030 demand for 106 million barrels a day.

China will be the major cause of the increase in demand, and will pass the US as the largest energy-consuming nation around 2025.

Some analysts are saying that the market would struggle to produce even 90 million to 95 million barrels a day. But energy demand will be vastly different should countries limit the long-term concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million of carbon-dioxide equivalent and keep the global temperature rise to around 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

The IEA cautions tremendous environmental changes will occur if the largest national governments do not accelerate them movement to renewable energy. Earlier this week, long-term oil futures, those for crude delivery in December 2017, hit $99.97. Eight years is not such a long way off. Just this year, crude prices have moved from under $40 to about $80 and some experts believe that figure could hit $85 or more.

Under that scenario, energy demand would grow by 20% between 2007 and 2030, the capital needed to meet that demand would be $10.5 trillion instead of $26 trillion.

“A continuation of current trends in energy use puts the world on track for a rise in temperature of up to 6°C and poses serious threats to global energy security,” said Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA, in a statement.

As a result of the global economic crisis, investment in exploration and production of oil and natural gas has already been cut by more than $90 billion this year compared with 2008.