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As a result, GCC residents may well emerge soon as world leaders in per capita residential electricity consumption, according to a Deloitte white paper on Energy and Resources in the Middle East entitled "Energy on Demand: The Future of GCC Energy Efficiency", the fourth in a series of 'Managing Scarcity for the Future' monthly white papers.

A large part of this increase is attributed to the needs of a growing population throughout the GCC and a significant 47% of energy consumption diverted into residential use.

"Believe it or not, the residents of GCC countries use more electricity domestically than their counterparts in the United States", said Kenneth McKellar, partner and Energy and Resources leader at Deloitte in the Middle East.

He added: "Given this scenario, we would expect effective demand management to play a key role in the energy balance of GCC countries, and this is already happening. As the role of demand management increases, energy efficiency policies and measures will also be inevitably streamlined and reassessed."

According to the white paper, since GCC countries are not as industrialized or service-based as other economies, their residential use of electric power will form a greater proportion of overall electricity consumption. GCC countries put only 10.5% of their electricity to use in 'industry' as opposed to 37.7% globally.

According to McKellar: "GCC countries have embarked on economic diversification plans, with industrialization as a key component of the long term strategies which they are pursuing. Based on the existing electricity consumption patterns of other industrialized and industrializing countries, the success of this strategy may, alongside other measures, require a rebalancing in electricity consumption from residential to industrial sectors in the long term." The white paper further states that the effective deployment of the GCC Interconnection Grid should take GCC countries some way in optimizing the generation and transmission of electricity among them, thus contributing to energy efficiency gains.