Energy use by economic output

Energy use in kWh per GDP per capita. Country data from NationMaster, plotted with R. The green line is the LOESS regression curve. The blue lines are averages for top and bottom 100 countries (after removing the best and worst 10 countries), the pink lines are averages for countries ranked 11-20 from top and bottom.

Roughly speaking, the general trend is five bucks GDP for every kWh of energy use. The least efficient countries get 2 $/kWh and the most efficient 25 $/kWh.

Assuming that energy use follows economic growth and that the average annual global economic growth is 3%, we can extrapolate (hah) that the global energy use would equal the total output of the Sun at around the year 3125. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.