An economy's production and consumption of electricity are basic indicators of its size and level of development. Although a few countries export electric power, most production is for domestic consumption. Expanding the supply of electricity to meet the growing demand of increasingly urbanized and industrialized economies without incurring unacceptable social, economic, and environmental costs is one of the great challenges facing developing countries.

Modern societies are becoming increasing dependent on reliable and secure electricity supplies to underpin economic growth and community prosperity. This reliance is set to grow as more efficient and less carbon intensive forms of power are developed and deployed to help decarbonize economies. Maintaining reliable and secure electricity services while seeking to rapidly decarbonize power systems is a key challenge for countries throughout the world.

In developing economies growth in energy use is closely related to growth in the modern sectors - industry, motorized transport, and urban areas - but energy use also reflects climatic, geographic, and economic factors (such as the relative price of energy). Energy use has been growing rapidly in low- and middle-income economies, but high-income economies still use almost five times as much energy on a per capita basis.

Governments in many countries are increasingly aware of the urgent need to make better use of the world's energy resources. Improved energy efficiency is often the most economic and readily available means of improving energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Electric power transmission and distribution losses (kWh)
Electricity consumption is equivalent to production less power plants' own use and transmission, distribution, and transformation losses less exports plus imports. It includes consumption by auxiliary stations, losses in transformers that are considered integral parts of those stations, and electricity produced by pumping installations. Where data are available, it covers electricity generated by primary sources of energy - coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wind, tide and wave, and combustible renewables. Neither production nor consumption data capture the reliability of supplies, including breakdowns, load factors, and frequency of outages.
Electric power transmission and distribution losses include losses in transmission between sources of supply and points of distribution and in the distribution to consumers, including pilferage.
Data on electric power production and consumption are collected from national energy agencies by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and adjusted by the IEA to meet international definitions. Electric power transmission and distribution losses percentage of output is the share of electric power transmission and distribution losses to electricity production which is the total number of GWh generated by power plants separated into electricity plants and CHP plants.