Re: A Short History of Energy (in the US)

Bent

A little bit of thinking about the US 1790 vs. modern day Italy comparison will tell you that it has to be nonsense. Modern day Italy has cars, electricity, air conditioning (they use it less than Americans, but they use it), heavy industry, etc. 1790 America had wood, horsepower, a tiny bit of water mills.

Either the 1790 US number is wrong, or the modern Italian one is wrong.

A better comparison would be a 1790 American against a modern African, where again I suspect the modern African has more energy at his disposal (think of all the cars, planes, trucks, container ships, electric lights, radios, phones, TVs in modern Africa) but the ratio would be much closer.

The Stern Review modelled this pretty closely in one of the supporting papers. There is a linear correlation between GDP per capita and energy consumption *but*:

- there are a couple of outliers (eg Japan is relatively low, Luxembourg very high)
- there are structural breaks (the curve flattens markedly) at, from memory, around $10k US/ capita and around $25k/ capita (US is about $41k/ capita from memory)

The short answer is that it's going to be the *form* of energy that we use that will change (more renewables, probably more nuclear) not the quantity (Switzerland and Japan have shown that you can make significant reductions, but human nature comes into play: Switzerland is also the country that has a 'Car Driver's Party' to fight restrictions on driving as well as a car culture. The rebound effect on conservation is significant.