There has been a general consensus that greenhouse gas emission is closely related with energy consumption. A systematic and complete investigation of the state and evolution of the energy consumption structure (ECS) of global countries is of great importance to figure out the different positions, responsibilities and missions of each country in the global climate change cooperation. Furthermore, such task is of great policy implications to generate a global reference system for different countries, guiding each one to improve, update and optimize its ECS. However, most existing studies regarding the world ECS neglects the evolutionary trends of ECS and their distributional positions in the global picture. Noting the paucity of studies of convergence in ECS across the world countries, this paper aims to explore the evolution of ECS at the national level and the global level to sharpen understandings on the state of global energy transition by employing the distribution dynamics approach. Three major energy sources were investigated, including coal, oil, and natural gas. The dataset was collected from the Global Trade Analysis Project database whose latest version covers the period from 2004 to 2014. In the second part of the analysis, the dataset is further divided into different income groups so as to evaluate the impacts of income on the distribution dynamics. A distribution dynamics approach is used to analyze the data of almost all the countries and regions in the world. The visualization of global ECS provides an insightful and novel understanding on the underlying trends. This study fills an important gap in the literature by providing several important findings which are not available from traditional econometric techniques. First, many countries would reduce their relative coal and oil consumption in the future but oil would remain to be the most common form of energy source. However, great variability can be observed for the distribution of gas consumption. Second, from the ergodic distribution of the gas market, it can be observed convergence clubs may emerge in the long run as the countries would congregate in certain clusters with similar levels of gas consumption. These findings call for further research and policy planning for the development of gas industry. Third, the distribution dynamics is very different for the four income groups (according to the World Bank), and so it is necessary to take a country's income level into consideration in formulating energy policies. Fourth, our findings reflect the issue of global inequality amongst the countries as the energy consumption of the poor countries are much lower than the other countries. Fifth, oil is deemed to be the most popular form of energy sources for the upper-middle-income and high-income countries, while coal is not a preferred energy source for the affluent countries, thereby suggesting the need to provide aid to the poor countries for mitigating the use of coal. Finally, gas consumption seems to have a very high variability and the countries can have very different consumption patterns of gas even if they belong to the same income category, implying that country-specific policies should be formulated for the development of the gas industry. Furthermore, it is observed that for the lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income countries, the big consumers of gas tend to increase their gas consumption further. The findings derived from this study may prove valuable for the policy makers in formulating energy policies for adapting to market changes, and may assist the design of international aid program on mitigating carbon emissions for the poor countries.

人们普遍认为，温室气体排放与能源消耗密切相关。对全球国家的能源消费结构（ECS）的状态和演变进行系统而全面的调查，对于弄清每个国家在全球气候变化合作中的不同立场，责任和使命至关重要。此外，这项任务对于建立针对不同国家的全球参考系统具有重大的政策意义，指导每个国家改进，更新和优化其ECS。但是，有关世界ECS的大多数现有研究都忽略了ECS的演变趋势及其在全球范围内的分布位置。注意到世界各国对ECS趋同的研究很少，本文旨在探索ECS在国家和全球范围内的发展，以通过采用分布动力学方法来加深对全球能源过渡状态的了解。研究了三种主要能源，包括煤炭，石油和天然气。该数据集来自全球贸易分析项目数据库，其最新版本涵盖2004年至2014年。在分析的第二部分，该数据集被进一步分为不同的收入组，以评估收入对分配的影响动力学。分布动力学方法用于分析世界上几乎所有国家和地区的数据。全球ECS的可视化提供了对潜在趋势的深刻见解和新颖理解。这项研究通过提供一些传统计量经济学无法获得的重要发现，填补了文献中的一个重要空白。首先，许多国家将来会减少其相对的煤炭和石油消耗，但石油仍将是最常见的能源来源。但是，可以观察到气体消耗分布的巨大差异。其次，从天然气市场的遍历分布来看，从长远来看，趋同俱乐部可能会出现，因为这些国家将聚集在某些天然气消费水平相似的集群中。这些发现要求对天然气工业的发展进行进一步的研究和制定政策计划。第三，根据世界银行的数据，四个收入群体的分配动态非常不同，因此在制定能源政策时必须考虑一个国家的收入水平。第四，我们的发现反映了国家之间的全球不平等问题，因为穷国的能源消耗远低于其他国家。第五，石油被认为是中高收入国家和高收入国家最受欢迎的能源，而煤炭不是富裕国家的首选能源，因此表明有必要向穷人提供援助减少煤炭使用的国家。最后，天然气消费似乎具有很大的可变性，即使这些国家属于同一收入类别，这些国家的天然气消费模式也可以有很大不同，这意味着应该针对天然气工业的发展制定针对特定国家的政策。此外，据观察，对于中低收入国家和中高收入国家，天然气的大消费国往往会进一步增加其天然气消费量。这项研究得出的发现对于决策者制定适应市场变化的能源政策可能证明是有价值的，并且可以帮助设计国际援助计划以减轻贫困国家的碳排放。