Potential for technology transfer

Developing countries need energy to raise productivity and to improve their living standards. Yet supplying energy to achieve these goals, with the current patterns of production and use, raises serious problems - financial, institutional and environment. The magnitude of these problems underlines the need for more efficient and sophisticated production, conversion, delivery and use of energy in developing countries. The consumption of commercial energy - coal, oil, gas and electricity - in the developing countries could triple by 2020. The absolute amount of traditional or biomass fuels consumed will rise considerably as well. While energy consumption per capita in the developing world will continue to lie far below consumption per capita in industrialized countries in coming years, the share of the developing countries in world commercial energy consumption will rise from 23 to 40% over the next three decades. Among the factors contributing to this rapid increase are: population growth, rising living standards and growing and changing consumer demands. At the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) they are currently evaluating ways of better providing energy services for development, including incorporating better technologies (more efficient consumer appliances, industrial processes and transport systems, as well as new and improved energy supply systems) and improving the institutional and policy mechanisms that determine their rate of adoption. Based on this analysis, OTA will examine the role of the US government in promoting the transfer of improved energy technologies to developing countries