Demand on power grows 2.2 percent annually from 2008 to 2035

Global power demand will rise 2.2 percent annually from 2008 through 2035, driven mainly by China and countries in the developing world.

About 80 percent of the increase will come from countries not part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Energy Agency forecasts in its annual World Energy Outlook, BusinessWeek reports.

The International Energy Agency said that oil supplies will be pushed near their peak over the coming decades, endangering government pledges to limit the increase in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius.

The Paris-based IEA - the energy arm of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a grouping of the world's richest nations - said that global energy consumption will reach 16.7 billion metric tons of oil equivalent by 2035.

China's demand will jump 75 percent, accounting for more than a third of that surge in energy use, the IEA predicted in its annual World Energy Outlook.

"It is hard to overestimate the growing importance of China in global energy," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka told reporters in London. "How the country responds to the threats to global energy security and climate posed by rising fossil fuel use will have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the world," according to The Associated Press.