Monday, July 19, 2010

The Prime Indicator

Energy consumption is the number 1 indicator of economic activity.

China Passes U.S. as World's Biggest Energy Consumer

Some interesting quotes from the article:

"Highlighting how quickly its energy demand has increased, China's total energy consumption was just half the size of the U.S. 10 years ago."

"The U.S. is still by far the biggest energy consumer per capita, with the average American burning five times as much energy annually as the average Chinese citizen...."

"...said China requires total energy investments of some $4 trillion over the next 20 years to keep feeding its economy and to avoid power blackouts and fuel shortages."

"...China is expected to build over the next 15 years some 1,000 gigawatts of new power-generation capacity. That is about the total amount of electricity-generation capacity in the U.S. currently...."

And this just in (updated 7-20-10)....

China denies IEA label as world's top energy user

I guess that want us to think they are making huge leaps in energy conservation measures.

1 comment:

Mike said...

Yep, China buys a lot of oil to make plastic crap, driving the price of oil up, then turn around and sell the plastic crap to us and we buy it up, driving up the price, prompting the Chinese to make more of it, using more oil....endless, vicious circle.

I keep telling people to turn the plastic crap over, read the label, find out where it's from. China has fired the first shots of WWIII and we're buying their weapons for them. It's time we bought from our allies and not from our enemies.