World News
The world turns more energy efficient Efficiency trends are expected to continue for decades.
People aren’t just talking
about energy efficiency. It’s actu- ally happening across the globe – and there is a way to measure it.
It’s called energy intensity, and it is calculated by comparing energy consumption to the mea- sure of a country’s economic production—its Gross Domestic Product. In other words, energy intensity measures how much energy it takes to produce a dol- lar of economic activity. In the past 25 years, energy intensity worldwide has dropped by one-third, says the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). There can be a lot of reasons for a decline in energy intensity:
more efficient lighting options, energy use habits, standards for vehicle fuel economy and building codes, and economies based more on services and less on industrial production. “Energy intensity has de- creased in nearly all regions of the world,” says EIA, “with reductions in energy intensity occurring both in the more de- veloped economies … and in the emerging nations.” EIA predicts energy efficiency will continue to improve. The agency’s International Energy Outlook 2016 forecasts that over the next 28 years stud- ied in the report, world energy intensity will decline almost 2 percent a year, from 5.8 thou-
sand British Thermal Units of energy for each dollar of Gross Domestic Product in 2012, to 3.5 by 2040.
According to EIA, more eco- nomically developed countries tend to have lower energy inten- sities because they “have tran- sitioned from relying on energy- intensive manufacturing to using more services-based economic activities which are less energy intensive.” EIA says that in 2015, devel- oped economies used 12 per- cent less energy per dollar than developing countries.
Paul Wesslund writes on cooperative issues for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the Arlington, Va.-based service arm of the nation’s 900-plus consum- er-owned, not- for-profit electric cooperatives.
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