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> 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
by delichon 14d ago
> 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 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 ≈ 0.52, so the U.S. uses about 48% less energy per dollar than in 1995, versus 44% per euro for the EU. So pretty much the same as across the pond.
- PunchTornado 14d agoGood point. One could counter with the fact that US transitioned to service based and software while EU kept the heavy industry (more) while doing the change
- karmakurtisaani 14d agoAnd probably both of these can be explained largely by the fact that most of the energy intensive production happens now in Asia.
- bluGill 14d agoThey 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.
- vlovich123 14d agoInstalling renewable energy doesn’t change the amount of energy required. The shift to Asia is almost certainly the bulk of it
- bluGill 14d agoIt changes the amount of oil used which is the more important consultation
- vlovich123 14d agoWhich is irrelevant to the article which talks about the amount of energy used.
- NooneAtAll3 14d agoeveryone switched from manufacturing to service jobs
- tonyedgecombe 14d agoAlthough manufacturing output has remained stable.
- phil21 13d agoOnly if you use dollar value output as some weird substitute for actually making things.
- david38 14d agoManufacturing 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.
- ahartmetz 14d ago>Young people prefer phones to cars even I mean, I probably do, too. I certainly use my phone much more often (I live in Berlin). But please, can we not make cars smartphones on wheels? I don't want to throw away my car after five years because the software is outdated, the CPU has become too weak and the battery is worn out. (Not a dig against electric cars, their batteries usually last much longer)
- xethos 13d agoI get your point, and adore my Fiero, but most software updates to cellphones are required because they're networked. Cars don't have to be, nor (IMO) should be internet-connected. So if the CPU in the infotainment system was sufficient at launch, and there's no reason to update the (not-internet-connected) software, then the CPU will continue to be sufficient, and the software being out of date is irrelevant. Not to defend the modern tablet-on-dash, internet-connected, reports-your-sexual-preference "car", just to point out that the transition to digital isn't, by itself, bad
- tonyedgecombe 14d agoMost 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.
- deleted 13d ago[deleted]
- BobbyTables2 13d agoHow is Europe similar then? I’d expect the US spends vastly more energy on transportation (individual vehicles) and housing (larger, more AC, etc)
- wahern 13d agoThat's true for states like California and perhaps the US generally, but in states like Texas industry uses half of all energy. ( https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=66224 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=66224) Likewise for South Korea and China where over half is for industry. This is precisely because most states exported their heavy industry, both overseas and to states like Texas, which has many chemical plants and similar energy-intensive industry.
- tuatoru 13d ago> Most energy consumption is for transportation and housing. Of course it is, if you have offshored energy-intensive industries.
- tmtvl 14d agoInterestingly you're looking at the wrong column: emissions per million USD GDP have gone from 467 metric tons to 206 metric tons. That's an improvement of about 56%. It'd be great if the politicians here in the EU could pull their heads out of their arses long enough to try and match that.
- cinntaile 14d agoWhat are the equivalent numbers in the EU? Be sure to compare the same numbers. Usually they're in MtCO2e and not in MtCO2 like in that PDF.
- jskdkdkdkf 14d ago[dead]
- croes 14d agoDoes this number include the outsourcing of production to Asia and to ship the products to the US?
- tmtvl 14d agoNo chance of that and I don't know where GP found that table but it most likely doesn't account for _any_ externalities.
- izacus 14d agoEU is already 40% better than US, so why exactly are you implying it's worse?
- philipallstar 14d ago> why exactly Hyacinth Bucket has entered the chat.
- derriz 14d agoMatch in what way? The equivalent number for the EU is about 125 tons I believe.
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- HWR_14 14d agoIsn't this best explained by inflation. It seems like this implies that inflation adjusted GDP/energy remained pretty constant
- usefulcat 14d agoThose 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".
- dismalaf 14d ago> I don't know exactly what it meant by "chained" It does mean they tried to eliminate inflation as a factor. In my experience though the basket of goods used for inflation calculations do a poor job representing the majority of consumers' and businesses' costs.
- TrainedMonkey 14d agoI 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.
- carefree-bob 14d agoIt 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-Worlds-First-Electrostate.html 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-Southeast-Asias-LNG-Demand.html 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-Deeper-Into-US-Gulf-Coast-Market.html 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.
- matthewdgreen 13d agoChina has built and deployed nearly 1.25TW of renewable energy in five years, and they're deploying on an exponential. If you're trying to convince me this isn't impressive or relevant to our future "because they still get half their energy from coal" then you're not going to convince me of much. This is HN, not Reddit.
- carefree-bob 12d ago
- sellmesoap 13d agoIt's counter intuitive in the way that the price of fuel has gone up over that time (causing prices on many things to rise because most things have a little oil in their price tag due to production and transport etc.), so in terms of buying fuel then and now how much is 1BTU worth?