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107 comments on Friday open thread

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Greko on January 20, 2006 - 10:49am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Food for thought.

Below I give a list of seven european countries that have one thing in common. They consumed in 2004 less oil than in 1994. And no, they are not east european countries and they have not experienced some kind of economic collapse. The numbers are in thousand barrels per day and you can check for yourself the BP's Statistical Review of World Energy 2005 at http://www.bp.com/genericsection.do?categoryId=92&contentId=7005893

Denmark: 209/189
Germany: 2880/2665
Italy: 1920/1871
Norway: 212/209
Sweden: 354/319
Switzerland: 272/258
United Kingdom: 1777/1756

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teemu on January 20, 2006 - 11:20am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Those countries not have experienced economic collapse, but at least Italy and Germany have much worse economic situation now than in 1994. Also lot of Europe has switched to russian gas during last ten years.
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plasticgolem on January 20, 2006 - 11:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Additionally, a lot of energy intensive manufacturing has been shut down in the last 10-12 years and has been replaced by service jobs (or unemployment). For example there is virtually no more auto industry in UK.  Even beyond that, in the case of Germany one has to see that in 1994 some ex-Communist industries were still running in the Eastern part. Germany has seen huge CO2 and consumption reductions just by switching off ex-Communist industry in the 1990s.
(saying that the situation is much worse in Germany than 1994 however is an exaggeration - the main problem is that it just never gets better)
So, among economic stagnation, moving traditionally energy intensive manufacturing to China, switching off Commie factories, and moving to Russian gas, this reduction is not any kind of policy achievement.
Also it should be remembered that several of these factors also make it quite easy for certain European nations to fulfill Kyoto requirements, without taking any 'courageous and daring' measures.
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TI on January 20, 2006 - 12:32pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
German total energy consumption has been essentially flat during that timeframe, so has Norwegian, and Swiss. Italian consumption has grown nearly 20%, UK by 5%. Denmark has gone down. So mainly it is explicable by fuel substitution and quite slow economic growth. Heavy, energy-intensive industry has also moved away from Western Europe. Notice that we speak here  about the total energy, not only about oil.
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