Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
This decoupling of economic growth from energy and CO 2 emissions is
just what we want to see. It is particularly satisfying that the most energy-
greedy sectors, such as steel, minerals, chemicals and paper and pulp, have
all cut their energy use, with chemicals achieving the largest reduction of
nearly thirty percent. But some countries' reduced energy-usage has had
less to do with any breakthrough in efficiency or technique and more to
do with their shift away from heavy industry or raw material production.
For instance, the reason why Australia has the highest energy intensity of
any IEA member country is that half of its industrial output cies in the
production of raw materials.
With the maturing of the IEA's nineteen richer economies, the service
sector (which covers such a vast range of white-collar activities that it can
hardly be called a sector, ranging from trade, finance, real estate to hair
cutting) has gained at the expense of manufacturing. Between 1990 and
2004, service output rose by 45 percent, but energy consumption rose by
only 26 percent. Not surprisingly it is electricity - versatile and clean (at
the point of use) - that dominates the service sector(s), because of the
electronic equipment and air conditioning in offices.
In households, total energy use is on the rise - it rose by fourteen per-
cent between 1990 and 2004 among these IEA member countries. This is
because the population is also growing and because more of us now live
in smaller household units. But the new growth factor is the plethora of
appliances that now litter our houses.
It is not so much that individual appliances are so wasteful. Indeed all
of the traditional household appliances use energy more efficiently than
they used to: the only exception being televisions, as today's large screens
use more power. The five big appliances that most people have - fridges,
freezers, TVs, washing machines and dishwashers - still account for about
half the energy consumption of all household appliances. But this ratio
has been declining as smaller gadgets proliferate and push up overall
electricity use.
Gadgets galore
We can use information technology and electronic devices to save energy
by, for instance, creating smart grids and by teleworking from home
instead of travelling to offices. But we are also in danger of letting these
technologies gobble up a serious and growing amount of energy, often
heedlessly and needlessly. Charting the problem in a 2009 report called
Gadgets and Gigawatts , the IEA estimated that information and com-
 
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