America’s Energy Diet

By Mike Mulvihill

We’re using less energy – seriously. No, it’s not that we’re using fewer barrels of oil or kilowatts of electricity as our population grows. But according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data, we’ve made tremendous progress in using energy more efficiently. In fact, Dr. Mark Perry’s blog post based on the EIA data concludes that in 2009, we used less than half the energy required in the mid-1970s to produce each real dollar of GDP, an all-time record low. (Dr. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan and is a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.)

How could this be possible? Well, we have shifted to a more service-oriented economy sending a lot of our energy intensive heavy manufacturing overseas. But, Perry points out other factors are also at play.  For instance, since 1990, the energy consumed by the five most common household appliances fell by between 20 percent (air conditioner) and 73 percent.

These results are even more significant if you apply a slightly different measure of energy efficiency (“energy factor”) provided by the Association of Household Appliance Manufacturers. Using energy factor, which accounts for changes over time like the average tub volume of today’s clothes washers (27 percent larger today than in 1990), reductions include a 43 percent improvement in energy efficiency for a room air conditioner and 200 percent for a refrigerator.

Amazingly, the EIA report also showed that total U.S. energy consumption in 2009 (94.66 quadrillion BTUs) was less than the total energy consumed 12 years ago in 1997 (94.76 quadrillion BTUs).

To be fair, EIA says that total global energy consumption will grow nearly 50 percent by the year 2035 as developing nations ramp up their manufacturing sectors and an increased standard of living leads to more Westernized consumption patterns. But if we can continue to make strides in energy efficiency – particularly in manufacturing more energy efficient products – coupled with changing the behavior of how people use energy, perhaps we can trim that increase. More is good.