[Greenbuilding] reduced energy use in USA

Jason Holstine jason at amicusgreen.com
Thu Sep 23 19:47:01 CDT 2010


This sounds overly positive compared to other numbers I¹ve heard in the last
2 years. Emissions are down‹I¹ve heard generally around 4% year over year,
and it¹s mostly from industrial capacity reduction (recession).  But the per
capita could be well improved. Our economy is plenty more efficient than it
was in the 70s‹I¹ve seen numerous studies about it but can¹t quote them
off-hand. And given our population growth trends over 40 years, the per
capita numbers could skew positive.

You¹d like to think this is inherently b/c  people have gotten on board‹and
as Energy Star and other programs have matured this last decade, we¹ll see
nice improvements in per capita numbers this coming decade--but
unfortunately it¹ll be primarily b/c of the recession. Not only jobs, but
pollution is also offshoring.


On 9/23/10 8:30 PM, "Reuben Deumling" <9watts at gmail.com> wrote:

> I find this extremely unlikely.
> But it is also worth noting that carbon emissions (an absolute parameter) is
> quite different than carbon intensity (a relative parameter if there ever was
> one). 
> The per capita energy consumption (a third slice through this issue) is also
> not lower now than it's been since 1970. None of these numbers sound right to
> me and should be easily shown to be bunk.
> 
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 3:44 PM, Vadurro, Rob, EMNRD <rob.vadurro at state.nm.us>
> wrote:
>> I just read this from Rob Watson¹s GreenerBuildings News, reporting from the
>> Clinton Global Initiative confab:
>>  
>> There are some weakly positive signs on the carbon emissions front that show
>> U.S. carbon emissions in 2009 down to 1997 levels. Clearly, the economic
>> downturn contributed to this, but U.S. energy consumption per capita is lower
>> than it's been since 1970, and the energy and carbon intensity of the U.S.
>> economy is the lowest it has been since modern records have been kept.
>> 
>> If this is true, it would seem more than ³weakly positive² (at least to me).
>> Can anyone verify these statements?
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
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