India to be dominant source of energy growth from 2030: BP official

India will bypass China as the driver in global energy growth by 2030, a top official of BP said today.

"As the pattern of growth within China shifts -- slower economic growth and less intensive energy growth -- the baton is passing to India as the dominant source of energy growth," Spencer Dale, chief economist BP, told a Washington audience.

He said currently China and India account for around half of the world's energy.

"India and China, with about like 2.5 billion people, that's around a third of the world's current population is currently responsible for the energy growth and the growing prosperity drives increase the growth in energy demand, and that's what's driving the growth," Dale said.

He said with "sharp falls and outright falls" in coal consumption in China, it seems increasingly that coal consumption in the country has now peaked.

"But those falls in outright terms in both China and the OECD offset by increasing growth, particularly in India and other parts of fast-growing Southeast Asia," Dale said.

"But that flatlining means that the share of coal -- and with it global energy -- declines quite sharply to its lowest level seen since the Industrial Revolution," he said.