Tool Monkeys! World Getting Less Energy-Efficient, Per Worldwatch Report

[hatrack]

The watchword for the week at the Clinton Global Initiative's (CGI) annual summit in Manhattan this week has been "efficiency." (It narrowly beats out "traffic," which is what you'll be caught in trying to get anywhere in the city for the next few days.) I wrote about an industry consortium led by the Carbon War Room that will channel hundreds of millions of dollars towards retrofitting existing buildings, and today the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Goldman Sachs and several real estate companies announced a three-year project under CGI that will hep tenants thorough the country identify the savings of energy efficiency improvements and implement them. Peter Malik, NRDC's Director of Market Innovation, explained the benefits of the deal:

"By participating in a portfolio of high-profile efficient build-out projects and by approaching the savings in a quantitative manner we are developing an open-source, best-in-kind blueprint for both implementation and financial measurement of the benefits of high performance build-outs. And we don't stop there. By adopting a true life-cycle metric we go beyond a snapshot of performance. We measure the performance of the tenant spaces and / or the building across 10, even 15 years. In short, the goal is a long-term market shift."

Energy efficiency should be a no brainer—after all, who wants to waste? The savings help the environment and the bottom line as well. You can have political quibbles with renewables or natural gas or imported oil. But who would be against getting lean and mean?

No one—but that doesn't mean we're following through with the drive for greater efficiency. A new analysis by the Worldwatch Institute shows that global energy intensity—the amount of energy needed to produce a given unit of economic output—actually increased by 1.35% in 2010. That reverses a broad trend of decline energy intensity—meaning improved energy efficiency—over the past 30 years in the global economy.

EDIT

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/09/21/amid-paeans-to-energy-efficiency-the-world-is-getting-less-efficient/

[Yo_Mama]

1. If you shift production from high-capital economies to low-capital economies

this will of course happen.

Low capital economies tend to use more inefficient production.

[Nederland]

2. I wonder how much of this is due to the push for renewables

Some of the incentives like feed in tariffs in Europe result in horribly inefficient energy production. Generating power using solar panels in a place like Germany for example, is a particularly inefficient way to create power.

[TheWraith]

3. I'm sure it doesn't help, plus there's the issue of the economy.

Energy efficiency is probably one of the first corners to be cut in new construction.

[kristopher]

5. The "push for renewables" is having a very positive effect

Energy Intensity of Global Economy Rises, Reversing Longtime Trend
By Sheldon Yoder, Worldwatch Research Intern

Global energy intensity increased 1.35 percent in 2010, reversing a broader trend of decline over the last 30 years, according to a new Vital Signs Online article. Energy intensity, defined as total energy consumption divided by gross world product, has been growing faster than the global economy for the past two years, even though energy intensity overall has declined over the past decade. The article highlights reasons for these changes in emerging economies and industrialized countries, including China and the United States, and predicts that global energy intensity will return to an overall decline over the long term as economies opt for more sustainable development.

Between 1981 and 2010, global energy intensity decreased by about 20.5 percent, or 0.8 percent annually. “During this period of decline, most developed countries restructured their economies and energy-intensive heavy industries accounted for a shrinking share of production,” said Haibing Ma, Manager of Worldwatch’s China Program, who conducted the research. “New technologies applied to energy production and consumption significantly improved efficiency in almost every aspect of the economy,” says Ma. Particularly during the surge of the knowledge-based economy (a term describing the rise of computer and digital technology and a shift away from producing items like cars and furniture to “knowledge” in the form of software and design innovations) from 1991 to 2000, global economic productivity increased without parallel increases in energy use.

The report notes that worldwide energy efficiency had been increasing steadily until recently. Between 2004 and 2008, global energy intensity experienced its sharpest decline in 30 years, with an average annual rate of decrease of 1.87 percent. Starting in 2008–09, however, energy intensity rose again, experiencing the first rise in three decades. "Increases in economic energy intensity are especially discouraging, even when temporary," said Worldwatch Executive Director Robert Engelman. "With both population and consumption growing worldwide, the capacity of the world's economy to require less energy for each unit of output has been a rare positive trend for the environment. We need to find less energy-intensive ways to put people back to work and improve economic conditions."

In addition to technological advances, price developments play a key role in determining overall energy usage. World crude oil prices more than tripled between 2004 and 2008—the fastest rise since the oil crisis of the late 1970s—contributing to the sharp decline in energy intensity during that period. But after the second half of 2008, when international oil prices dropped 75 percent, global energy intensity started rising.

Energy intensity is declining in many developed countries, including the United States, Germany, and Japan. The most dramatic declines in industrial countries have occurred in the United States and Germany. Overall, China may have made the most progress worldwide with a 65 percent decline in energy intensity in the past 30 years...

http://www.worldwatch.org/energy-intensity-energy-efficiency-gross-world-product-emerging-economies-infrastructure-development

[wtmusic]

4. Russian tool monkeys are among the worst offenders

http://yearbook.enerdata.net/2009/energy-intensity-GDP-by-region.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_intensity

Burning Russian coal probably results in millions more casualties than Chernobyl, but who's counting.