> 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.<p>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.<p><a href="https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec1_19.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec1_19.pdf</a><p><pre><code> 1K BTU Consumption per $ of GDP
1995: 7.77
2025: 4.04
</code></pre>
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.
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.<p>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.
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.
everyone switched from manufacturing to service jobs
Although manufacturing output has remained stable.
Manufacturing is brutal at efficiency. Every generation they aggressively cut material use and process energy usage.<p>Look at any device that had a lot of metal years ago.<p>The second part is phones have replaced a lot of people’s “stuff”. Young people prefer phones to cars even.<p>You can loads of “stuff” on your phone and it’s just software.
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.<p>In other words, the entire thesis of the article can be overturned by a quick google search.<p>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:<p>* <a href="https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-China-Became-the-Worlds-First-Electrostate.html" rel="nofollow">https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-China-Became-...</a> -- 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.<p>* <a href="https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/AI-Boom-to-Boost-Southeast-Asias-LNG-Demand.html" rel="nofollow">https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/AI-Boom-to-Boost-Sou...</a> -- 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.<p>* <a href="https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Canadian-Oil-Pushes-Deeper-Into-US-Gulf-Coast-Market.html" rel="nofollow">https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Canadian-Oil-Pushes-De...</a> - 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.
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".<p>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".
Interestingly 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.
What 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.
EU is already 40% better than US, so why exactly are you implying it's worse?
Does this number include the outsourcing of production to Asia and to ship the products to the US?
Surely a directive is due
Good 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
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 <i>false</i>, these are different things. EU economy shifted from manufacturing to services in the past decades and especially after the GFC (from which it never recovered in some sectors), losing millions of those jobs in the process, and an output decline in the 20% range, France leading the way with the industrialization collapse. Services are inherently less energy sensitive than manufacturing and there's no question the latter, already struggling, hit another wall in 2022 because the continent has zero energy independence. If you cannot produce your energy your manufacturing will always be at the mercy of macroeconomic events, and your consumption will always depend on another country's production. It takes 20 seconds to generate an AI article full of fabrications but orders of magnitude more to properly correct it..
I think this is AI. It’s not as bad as some, but it’s got that breathless enthusiasm and drones on and on without ever quite getting to its point.
Pretty sure it's edited AI. Honestly for dry stuff like this it's okay, if a bit tiring at the end.
AI is fine in itself. The only question are the numbers correct. I'm not sure how to validate them. The facts count the most important. The second is the article readable without being too wordy or any other such problems.
Pangram flags it. It also talks about "quietly" and "the gap". It's AI.
Yes, a lot of obvious tells.
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<i>> Gas set the price of electricity in 15% of hours in Spain this year against 89% in Italy, and when Hormuz closed, Spain grew 0.7% while Italy got flagged as the eurozone's most exposed economy.</i><p>It's a shame that Italy spent so little on solar compared to Spain. Sun shining there as well last time I checked.
ai; dr, sorry
If ever there was a time to insert a few key visuals to illustrate your point…
We'll see after the winter. Industrial decline may also lead to reductions in energy use. And increased costs in coutnries where EU "exported" it's energy heavy industry may come back and bite, too.<p>I would not make conclusions from a short 5 month price shock.
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> The EU now runs on roughly 44 percent less energy per euro of output than it did in 1995, and more than a third of that improvement has landed since 2019 alone.<p>Is this really a de-industrialization story? Is manufacturing much more efficient since that time, or has the economy moved onto other less energy intensive tasks, say through outsourcing them to Asia?