Projection of energy-intensive material production for bottom-up scenario building

To this end, historic patterns of growth were analysed on a per capita basis from the 1980s onwards. Per capita production levels of steel, cement, and refinery products tend to level off for all countries as per capita income increases. These stabilisation levels, however, differ by a factor of 10 from country to country. Petrochemical and total paper and board production per capita, on the contrary, keeps on increasing with increasing income, and per capita aluminium production shows a rather weak relationship to income. Aggregated annual growth of physical production of energy-intensive commodities in this time period amounted to 5.9% in low, 1.1% in middle, and 0.8% in high-income countries. Assuming that a country experiences declining growth rates of physical production as its income increases, these aggregated figures may be used to estimate future growth rates. Projections thus based on recent growth trends suggest that earlier estimates may be improved.