China now the world’s top energy consumer (but the U.S. has become more energy efficient)

Flickr’d

Is there a green movement in China? Maybe there must be, considering the numbers that have just come out. China is now the planet\’s number 1 consumer of energy, overtaking the U.S. within the process. But collectively, the U.S. has improved its energy efficient more so than China, meaning that the U.S. can get the same quantity of work done while consuming less, say, coal or oil.

The actual numbers are pretty impressive, particularly because a trifling 10 years ago China was loads behind the U.S.

China consumed some 2,252 millions a whole lot the oil equivalent of sources resembling coal, nuclear power, natural gas, and hydropower. The U.S. consumed 4 percent less. These are numbers from last year, by the way in which.

But that\’s where energy efficiency comes into play. Since the year 2000, the U.S. has increased its energy efficiency by about 2.5 percent annually. China? 1.8 percent. So not an incredible difference, but a difference nonetheless.

Does this really mean anything to you? Eh, maybe. Certainly it\’ll have implications for the arena at large though. Now that China is the most important consumer of energy, it alone is within the position to tell energy providers, “Look, we\’re willing to pay X for Y units of energy.” If China\’s X is greater than the U.S.\’s X, then we might be gazing a situation where energy prices will go up simply because “someone else” is willing to pay more.

Which could mean that every one the factories that produce the whole lovely electronic gizmos we speak about day in, time out, could see their costs of doing business go up. And who would make up the variation? Yes, you!

Then again, it could actually have the very opposite effect, and turn out to be lowering prices.

Or, better yet, the Sun could explode, making all of this moot. Hard to run a factory without the Sun churning away available in the market.