But as countries adopt more energy efficiency technologies and energy conservation measures their energy intensity tends to fall (as it has in the US over the past 20 years). It is reasonable that as a country develops its economy it will need to supply more energy to its citizens to raise their standards of living. In this regard countries with very large populations have much further to go to deliver economic growth, China and India may have moved far up the development scale in recent decades, but they still have very low consumption of energy per capita.