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Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For

oilprice.com

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Re: Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For

#31

Post by carefree-bob »

delichon wrote: post #4

> Every euro of EU output now takes 44% less energy than it did in 1995, and more than a third of that improvement has landed since 2019. This is positioned as the key fact of the whole argument, presented first and repeated. But they do not attempt an equivalent US figure. So here's mine. https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec1_19.pdf 1K BTU Consumption per $ of GDP 1995: 7.77 2025: 4.04 4.04 / 7.77 ≈…

It is not just the US, it is all industrial economies, because this is primarily a tech innovation story. Newer tech is more efficient, so over time the economy as a whole does more with the same energy input. Whether you are looking at car engines, or jet engines, or home insulation, there were massive strides in efficiency improvement across the board since 1995, that have nothing whatsoever to do with Europe, and in which Europe is not a notable standout.

In other words, the entire thesis of the article can be overturned by a quick google search.

Since the start of the conflict with Iran, I've been looking at the oilprice.com website for price information and am shocked at the poor quality of the news articles. Here are some other examples of either very low effort or factually misleading articles, just posted on the site today:

* https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-China-Became-... -- the entire article is just three bullet point factoids that don't say much about an economy that still gets half its energy from burning coal.

* https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/AI-Boom-to-Boost-Sou... -- the entire article takes one consultancy report that says data center demand could boost Singapore and Malaysia's energy needs by 16%, and then engages in a reverie where the author imagines a number of other things that might be needed if this consultancy report is true.

* https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Canadian-Oil-Pushes-De... - a bizarre story in which nothing happened -- no one is pushing anywhere, rather the entire story is a series of graphs and charts discussing Canada's historical participation in US gulf coast oil industries over the long run, with no new announcement or action happening at all.

Re: Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For

#32

Post by tonyedgecombe »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #30
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And probably both of these can be explained largely by the fact that most of the energy intensive production happens now in Asia.

everyone switched from manufacturing to service jobs

Although manufacturing output has remained stable.

Re: Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For

#33

Post by tonyedgecombe »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #6
delichon wrote: post #4

> Every euro of EU output now takes 44% less energy than it did in 1995, and more than a third of that improvement has landed since 2019. This is positioned as the key fact of the whole argument, presented first and repeated. But they do not attempt an equivalent US figure. So here's mine. https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec1_19.pdf 1K BTU Consumption per $ of GDP 1995: 7.77 2025: 4.04 4.04 / 7.77 ≈…

And probably both of these can be explained largely by the fact that most of the energy intensive production happens now in Asia.

Most energy consumption is for transportation and housing.

The US trade deficit with the rest of the world is only about 3% of gdp, that doesn’t buy much in the way of emissions.

Re: Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For

#34

Post by vlovich123 »

bluGill wrote: post #23
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And probably both of these can be explained largely by the fact that most of the energy intensive production happens now in Asia.

They used and installed a fair amount of renewable energy since then. Plus, the similar efficiency gains in the EU and the article have also happened in the US. While there hasn't been government encouragement directly, there have been a lot of things that cause it to happen anyway.

Installing renewable energy doesn’t change the amount of energy required. The shift to Asia is almost certainly the bulk of it

Re: Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For

#35

Post by david38 »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #30
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And probably both of these can be explained largely by the fact that most of the energy intensive production happens now in Asia.

everyone switched from manufacturing to service jobs

Manufacturing is brutal at efficiency. Every generation they aggressively cut material use and process energy usage.

Look at any device that had a lot of metal years ago.

The second part is phones have replaced a lot of people’s “stuff”. Young people prefer phones to cars even.

You can loads of “stuff” on your phone and it’s just software.

Re: Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For

#37

Post by amryl »

0x_rs wrote: post #18

CTRL+F "manufacturing": 0 results for a website called "oilprice", instead it has this line: "An economy that produces more while burning less isn't stagnating…it's just getting more efficient, and there's no headline number for that, so it mostly doesn't get written about.", which is false , these are different things. EU economy shifted from manufacturing to services in the past decades and especially after the GFC…

Maybe search for "industrial" or "factory" instead...

Re: Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For

#38

Post by paganel »

There's a general malaise throughout this continent of Europe that neither these journos nor most of the (quite financially well-off) computer programmers from forums like this one are willing to look up straight in the face. The 40% AfD vote in Eastern Germany is just a local manifestation of that, the truth is that us, the normies, people are royally scared about our (financial and not only) futures have been left almost no-where else to go. And the squeeze on the energy we consume is a big factor behind all that.

Re: Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For

#40

Post by TrainedMonkey »

usefulcat wrote: post #25
HWR_14 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this best explained by inflation. It seems like this implies that inflation adjusted GDP/energy remained pretty constant

Those numbers are in units of "Consumption per Real Dollar of GDP", which is defined as follows: "Calculated as energy consumption divided by U.S. gross domestic product in chained (2017) dollars". I don't know exactly what it meant by "chained", although from the context it does sound as though it might mean something like "inflation adjusted".

I am getting more and more peeved by using GDP as a single number. Cost of existing, aka housing and healthy food, skyrocketed compared to median income. But hey, the tech got cheaper.
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