> 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.
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.
That'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) 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.
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.
I can spend more on a phone then I did on my last car, although I pay half my car's purchase price every year I pay for insurance so I shouldn't be bragging!
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 I don't want to throw away my car after five years because the software is outdated, the CPU has become too weak and the battery is worn out.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)
I 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to update the (not-internet-connected) software, then the CPU will continue to be sufficient, and the software being out of date is irrelevant.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
I'd be more interested in a car, the kind that people had before they went mad. Smaller frontal area, lower center of gravity, lighter weight. More economic, faster, more fun to drive. I don't want to sit high neither, lower is more fun.
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".
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".
I 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.
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.
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.
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.
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/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-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.
China 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.
Yes, China is a big country that has deployed 1.25TW capacity of renewable energy, which will deliver approximately 40% of that actual energy, while using 5.6 TW from burning coal. FYI the reason you get 40% of capacity delivered rather than the usual 15% or so for solar and wind, is because most of China's renewable capacity is biofuels -- e.g. poor villagers burning wood, charcoal, etc, in small stoves. That biofuel number is an order of magnitude larger than China's solar deployment and is reliable, in terms of capacity turning into actual energy, as it does not depend on the weather.
So just step back and think about this again, now that you are better informed:
5.6 TW from coal - actually delivered
1.25 TW *capacity* from renewables
And this is what the article calls an "electrostate"
It'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?
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 false, 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..
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.
Problem is, if they didn’t put in the effort to write the article, how can I trust that they put in the effort to verify the facts?
Not to mention that the article is terribly verbose and never gets to its point (by the time I gave up, that is, quite a long way through). Writing is how you organize your thoughts, and it’s not been done here.
> 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.
It's a shame that Italy spent so little on solar compared to Spain. Sun shining there as well last time I checked.
There's a general malaise throughout this continent of Europe that neither these journos nor most of the (quite financially well-off) computer programmers from forums like this one are willing to look up straight in the face. The 40% AfD vote in Eastern Germany is just a local manifestation of that, the truth is that us, the normies, people are royally scared about our (financial and not only) futures have been left almost no-where else to go. And the squeeze on the energy we consume is a big factor behind all that.
Is supporting a racist, science-denying, authoritarian and xenophobic party which views Germany's European neighbors and allies as threats to its prosperity going to do so? When has strident ethno-nationalism delivered more livable lives to Germans?
I'm just not convinced with this "no alternative" narrative for supporting political movements which leverage hate and conspiracies. Be honest with yourself and own your opinions and views instead of claiming victimhood and blaming the political landscape for not offering you alternatives and forcing you to passively adopt a bunch of ugly views and positions.
I keep worrying that right around the time the USA wakes up from this madness and restores the proper names of Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, Europe is going to be like “hold my beer.”
>There's a general malaise throughout this continent of Europe
The continent is remarkably resilient, we just love to complain. The fact that we're handling a de facto war with Russia, an energy crisis, a trade crisis and about half a dozen other crises with merely moderate amount of pain is a sign of strength, not the opposite. Five years ago people were claiming we'd freeze to death.
And I'm saying that as a German who can't stand the AfD as much as anyone else, the fact that they sit at 40% in our poorest region of two million people (where a third has emigrated over the last two decades) maybe shouldn't send you into a panic. That's Germany's version of rural Alabama. Turns out we're not exceptionally immune to populism in times of stress.
AUR (our local extremist party here in Romania) is also at 40%, the thing is that the powers that be have stopped having elections here because of that. Don’t act like this it will last, because it won’t, the wealthy regions in countries like Germany ard the exception by now, not the norm.
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.
I would not make conclusions from a short 5 month price shock.
> 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.
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?
> 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
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.
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.
That'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) 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.
How is Europe similar then?
I’d expect the US spends vastly more energy on transportation (individual vehicles) and housing (larger, more AC, etc)
> Most energy consumption is for transportation and housing.
Of course it is, if you have offshored energy-intensive industries.
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.
Installing renewable energy doesn’t change the amount of energy required. The shift to Asia is almost certainly the bulk of it
It changes the amount of oil used which is the more important consultation
Which is irrelevant to the article which talks about the amount of energy used.
everyone switched from manufacturing to service jobs
Although manufacturing output has remained stable.
Only if you use dollar value output as some weird substitute for actually making things.
Manufacturing 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.
I can spend more on a phone then I did on my last car, although I pay half my car's purchase price every year I pay for insurance so I shouldn't be bragging!
>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)
I 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
Check out the Slate truck/suv
I'd be more interested in a car, the kind that people had before they went mad. Smaller frontal area, lower center of gravity, lighter weight. More economic, faster, more fun to drive. I don't want to sit high neither, lower is more fun.
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".
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".
I 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.
> 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.
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.
Match in what way? The equivalent number for the EU is about 125 tons I believe.
Match in 'percentage reduced since 1995'. Fortunately we're gonna get a bit of a chance to catch up considering the USA's current leadership.
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?
> why exactly
Hyacinth Bucket has entered the chat.
Does this number include the outsourcing of production to Asia and to ship the products to the US?
No chance of that and I don't know where GP found that table but it most likely doesn't account for _any_ externalities.
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.
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 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-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-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.
China 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.
Yes, China is a big country that has deployed 1.25TW capacity of renewable energy, which will deliver approximately 40% of that actual energy, while using 5.6 TW from burning coal. FYI the reason you get 40% of capacity delivered rather than the usual 15% or so for solar and wind, is because most of China's renewable capacity is biofuels -- e.g. poor villagers burning wood, charcoal, etc, in small stoves. That biofuel number is an order of magnitude larger than China's solar deployment and is reliable, in terms of capacity turning into actual energy, as it does not depend on the weather.
So just step back and think about this again, now that you are better informed:
And this is what the article calls an "electrostate"It'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?
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 false, 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..
Maybe search for "industrial" or "factory" instead...
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.
Pangram flags it. It also talks about "quietly" and "the gap". It's AI.
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.
Problem is, if they didn’t put in the effort to write the article, how can I trust that they put in the effort to verify the facts?
Not to mention that the article is terribly verbose and never gets to its point (by the time I gave up, that is, quite a long way through). Writing is how you organize your thoughts, and it’s not been done here.
It’s not even edited, pangram rates it 100% bot-authored.
Yes, a lot of obvious tells.
> 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.
It's a shame that Italy spent so little on solar compared to Spain. Sun shining there as well last time I checked.
Dont worry, if ultras wins next year election in sPain they will tax sun again, so shame levels will equalize.
If ever there was a time to insert a few key visuals to illustrate your point…
But today, sir, is not that time. Today, we march.
ai; dr, sorry
There's a general malaise throughout this continent of Europe that neither these journos nor most of the (quite financially well-off) computer programmers from forums like this one are willing to look up straight in the face. The 40% AfD vote in Eastern Germany is just a local manifestation of that, the truth is that us, the normies, people are royally scared about our (financial and not only) futures have been left almost no-where else to go. And the squeeze on the energy we consume is a big factor behind all that.
> have been left almost no-where else to go
I’m pretty sure that there are political alternatives to afd’s ethno-nationalism, climate change denialism and Putin-worship
There are? Which ones? Are they going to make our lives livable?
Is supporting a racist, science-denying, authoritarian and xenophobic party which views Germany's European neighbors and allies as threats to its prosperity going to do so? When has strident ethno-nationalism delivered more livable lives to Germans?
I'm just not convinced with this "no alternative" narrative for supporting political movements which leverage hate and conspiracies. Be honest with yourself and own your opinions and views instead of claiming victimhood and blaming the political landscape for not offering you alternatives and forcing you to passively adopt a bunch of ugly views and positions.
I keep worrying that right around the time the USA wakes up from this madness and restores the proper names of Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, Europe is going to be like “hold my beer.”
>There's a general malaise throughout this continent of Europe
The continent is remarkably resilient, we just love to complain. The fact that we're handling a de facto war with Russia, an energy crisis, a trade crisis and about half a dozen other crises with merely moderate amount of pain is a sign of strength, not the opposite. Five years ago people were claiming we'd freeze to death.
And I'm saying that as a German who can't stand the AfD as much as anyone else, the fact that they sit at 40% in our poorest region of two million people (where a third has emigrated over the last two decades) maybe shouldn't send you into a panic. That's Germany's version of rural Alabama. Turns out we're not exceptionally immune to populism in times of stress.
AUR (our local extremist party here in Romania) is also at 40%, the thing is that the powers that be have stopped having elections here because of that. Don’t act like this it will last, because it won’t, the wealthy regions in countries like Germany ard the exception by now, not the norm.
Obvious claude slop; 100% bot authored according to pangram
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.
I would not make conclusions from a short 5 month price shock.
> 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.
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?