Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of energy use and the structural changes that led to post-industrial economies. As a
result of a combination of these factors, the energy intensity of OECD countries has
been falling by about 2.3% a year during the past few decades, although it is still
growing in many developing countries at a rate of approximately 1.2% per year.
In addition to income per capita there are a number of other indicators such as
longevity, literacy, and total fertility rate that seem to be closely correlated with
energy consumption. For that reason a more complex indicator, the Human Devel-
opment Index (HDI), has been proposed to correct some of the shortcomings of the
use of per capita income as a measure of development.
The HDI is a composite of:
- Longevity as measured by life expectancy;
- Knowledge, as measured by a combination of adult literacy (two-thirds weight) and
mean years of schooling (one-third weight); and
- Standard of living, as measured by purchasing power, based on real GDP per capita ad-
justed for the local cost of living (or purchasing parity power—PPP).
Each of these indicators is given a value between 0 and 1 and the resulting numbers
averaged in an overall index. For example, if the minimum for life expectancy is 25
years and the maximum is 85 years, the longevity component for a country where
life expectancy is 55 years would be 0.5. A similar procedure is used for know-
ledge and standard of living.
Figure 2.6
plots HDI as a function of per capita commercial energy consumption
per year for a large number of countries.
It is apparent from
Figure 2.6
that, for an energy consumption above 2 toe per
capita per year, the value of HDI is higher than 0.8 and essentially constant for all
countries. That amount of energy per capita, therefore, seems to be the minimum
energy needed to guarantee an acceptable level of living as measured by the HDI,
despite many variations of consumption patterns and lifestyles across countries. A
similar HDI for countries with different incomes per capita means that a lower in-
come is compensated by a greater longevity and increased knowledge.
As can also be seen from
Figure 2.6
,
a significant part of the world population
in many countries has a very low HDI. Analysis conducted by the World Bank has
indicated that there are more than 2 billion people without access to adequate en-
ergy services based on the use of gaseous and liquid fuels, as well as electricity.
