{"id":210,"date":"2015-08-28T23:30:52","date_gmt":"2015-08-29T03:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=210"},"modified":"2015-08-22T14:05:10","modified_gmt":"2015-08-22T18:05:10","slug":"energy-use-and-wealth-creation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=210","title":{"rendered":"Energy Use and Wealth Creation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Its common \u2018wisdom\u2019 bandied about at water coolers, dinner tables, and political gatherings, that while the United States has 5 percent of the world\u2019s population is uses 24 percent of the world\u2019s energy.\u00a0 Sagely nods and enlightened shakes of the head always come in the wake of such an utterance.\u00a0 But what does this statistic really mean \u2013 that we are wasteful, that we take from others, what?<\/p>\n

To the common man, this statistic indicates just how wasteful the United States is, just how predatory its consumption is, and so on.\u00a0 But it turns out that really isn\u2019t the case.\u00a0 The real situation is much more nuanced and subtle and the results show a few \u2018surprising\u2019 things \u2013 surprising relative to the common wisdom and preconceived notions of just how bad the situation is in the United States.<\/p>\n

First, the United States is comparable to its North American counterparts of Canada and Mexico in both energy consumption and wealth creation but actually ranks above both of them in how efficiently it use its energy.\u00a0 Second, the United States is much more efficient a wealth creation machine per unit energy than any other country its size in either Asia or Europe.\u00a0 Third, the United States produces a tremendous amount of energy, much of which is used by the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

So the answer to the question posed above is that the fact that the United States has 5 percent of the world\u2019s population and uses 24 percent of its energy doesn\u2019t really mean much at all. Let\u2019s see why.<\/p>\n

The Methodology<\/h2>\n

Good conclusions rest firmly on good data so let\u2019s start by collecting individual statistics on the various countries around the world.\u00a0 The following table shows the population, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, total GDP, energy use per capita, area, and efficiency (to be defined below) of 21 nations from various continents.<\/p>\n

\"Energy_GDP_Size\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The data referenced to calendar year 2011 since that is the latest year where data were available for all 5 categories.\u00a0 GDP values have units of United States Dollars (USD).\u00a0 The unit of energy use per capita is kilogram oil equivalent<\/a> (KOE), which is a normalized unit of energy that allows for world-wide comparisons.<\/p>\n

To promote transparent discussions, each of the data points was obtained in the following way:<\/p>\n