Urbanisation and the future energy pathway

Energy shift: Windmills harness the power of winds to generate electricity in the US. The global system’s evolution will depend first and foremost on technology and policy choices. — Bloomberg

FOR the first time in history, most of the world’s population is living in urban areas, even in less-developed regions, and that will soon be true even if rapidly urbanising China is excluded.

Like the shift in the centre of the global economy from the North Atlantic to Asia, the transition from fossil to non-fossil energy, and population ageing, urbanisation is one of the economic mega-trends.