Extended Data Fig. 4: Climate-change induced changes in total energy expenditures at end-of-century, by present-day income deciles.

The bar chart above depicts annual climate-change induced changes in total energy expenditures at 2099 under a high emissions scenario (RCP8.5) and the SSP3 socioeconomic scenario, separately for each decile of 2012 national per capita income. Income deciles are calculated across all countries at 2012; representative countries in selected deciles are indicated. Expenditures are calculated under a 1.4% annual price growth scenario and are expressed in 2019 USD per capita based on each decile’s projected 2099 population. Bars represent mean estimates across an ensemble of 33 climate models. Intervals indicate 5^th–95^th percentiles of projected distributions, accounting for climate model and econometric uncertainty (Supplementary Section B.5). The chart demonstrates that heterogeneity in expenditure changes at end-of-century (Fig. 2a) is systematically correlated with present-day national income per capita. Over the upper half of the present-day income distribution, we find that countries with higher incomes today are generally projected to experience larger overall net savings at end-of-century. This partly reflects the fact that today’s richest countries tend to be in temperate climates, where energy savings from fewer cold days will more than offset increases in costs from more hot days. The smallest savings at end-of-century are projected to occur in middle deciles of the present-day income distribution, which is consistent with many of these countries being situated in the tropics and also attaining sufficiently high income levels at end-of-century to increase electricity consumption due to more hot days. The positive correlation between present-day income and net savings at end-of-century does not hold in the lower ranges of today’s income distribution. Net savings in today’s poorest deciles (i.e. first and second) are actually higher than in the third and fourth deciles, as many of the poorest countries are projected to remain too poor at end-of-century to increase electricity consumption on hot days.