Which country conserves the most energy

The use of such traditional fuels as wood and dung for cooking is inefficient and generates extremely high levels of indoor pollution. Accelerating the transition to more expensive, but far cleaner kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas LPG , or electric stoves, would dramatically reduce the exposure to unhealthy levels of particulate pollution in many developing countries, particularly among women and children.

Other sectors that offer great opportunities to reduce conventional levels of air pollutant emissions and to improve public health are transport and electricity production.

More stringent pollution control requirements for automobiles, heavy-duty vehicles and equipment and power plants, in particular, would substantially improve air quality.

A good example is the use of natural gas for the production of electricity. This became increasingly common in the United States in the s. One reason is that natural gas plants do not require the same pollution controls that coal-fired plants do e. This has helped them to become competitive with coal-fired power stations in many countries that regulate conventional pollutant emissions.

Some conventional pollutants, such as black carbon, directly contribute to global warming. In those cases, conventional emission controls can provide automatic climate co-benefits. In other cases, the relationship is more complicated. For example, sulfur particles have a cooling effect on the atmosphere.

In general, most post-combustion conventional-pollutant control technologies do not reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas. Moreover, agreements to reduce or control emissions that could disrupt global climate systems have proved to be difficult to negotiate.

The challenge for developing countries is greatly complicated by the need to expand access to essential energy services and to simultaneously provide low-cost energy for economic development.

Yet, stark inequalities persist throughout the world in the access to modern energy services. In , the non-OECD countries accounted for just over half 52 percent of global primary energy consumption. This increase in energy consumption has not, however, resulted in a more equitable access to energy services on a per capita basis.

The inequities in per capita use of electricity are even greater than the inequities in per capita use of primary energy.

In , the average citizen in the OECD countries used 8, kwh of electricity. In contrast, the average citizen in China used 1, kwh and the per capita average for the rest of Asia was kwh. The per capita average use of electricity in in Latin America and Africa were 1, kwh and kwh respectively. This means that the number of people throughout the world who had no access to electricity has hardly changed in absolute terms since UNDP, , p. Not surprisingly, the rural poor in developing countries account for the vast majority nearly 90 percent of households that have no access to electricity.

In fact, providing safe, clean, reliable and affordable energy to those who currently have no access to such is widely viewed as essential in order to progress toward other development objectives. Although there was no specific chapter on energy in Agenda 21 and no specific United Nations Millennium Development Goal on energy, the access to basic energy services is directly linked to most social and economic development targets that were outlined in the Millennium Declaration WEHAB Working Group, Moreover, where access to energy is lacking, other urgent human and societal needs also are often not met, meaning that energy needs must compete with other priorities.

Fortunately, people need only a relatively modest amount of electricity to be able to read at night, pump a minimal amount of drinking water and listen to radio broadcasts G8-RETF, In other words, it is possible to greatly improve the quality of life for many poor households with a level of energy consumption that is far below that of the average citizen in an industrialized country.

These also require energy. Table 1 below shows typical electric service requirements for off-grid households in developing countries, assuming an average household size of five persons. It has been estimated that basic household services, along with commercial and community activities e.

Note that this figure includes only basic electricity needs. The energy requirements of cooking and transportation are not included. Providing basic electricity services to these people at an average annual consumption level of 50 kWh per person would increase the global end-use demand for electricity by roughly.

Table 1. A rapid rise in world oil prices has led to a steep and, for some countries, increasingly unmanageable increase of their import bill for energy commodities.

For these countries, diversifying the domestic energy resource base and reducing the demand for imported fuels would bring a host of benefits, not only by freeing scarce resources for domestic investment, but also by reducing long-term exposure to financial and humanitarian crises that now loom in many parts of the world. As noted in a previous section, energy use in many developing countries is a significant and immediate cause of high levels of air pollution and other forms of environmental degradation.

Energy-related emissions from power plants, automobiles, heavy equipment and industrial facilities are largely responsible—especially in major cities—for levels of ambient air pollution that routinely exceed the health thresholds set by many developed countries, and sometimes by an order of magnitude..

In both urban and rural areas, indoor air pollution caused by the use of traditional fuels for cooking and space heating daily exposes billions of people, especially women and children, to significant cardiovascular and respiratory health risks. In many cases, adverse environmental impacts begin well upstream of the point of energy end-use.

The extraction of commercial fuels like coal and oil is often highly damaging to local ecosystems and becomes an immediate cause of land and water pollution. Meanwhile, reliance on traditional fuels, such as wood, can produce its own adverse impacts.

Even though emissions in developed-country are overwhelmingly responsible for current levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, numerous analyses conclude that the myriad burdens of global warming are likely to fall disproportionately on developing countries. This is because developing countries are likely to be more sensitive to such adverse impacts as the effects on water resources and agricultural productivity.

They are also more likely to lack the financial and institutional means to implement effective adaptation measures. However, there will be tensions in the near term. This is particularly likely if policies designed to discourage the use of carbon-intensive conventional fuels, many of which implicitly or explicitly have the effect of raising energy prices, are seen as conflicting with the goal of expanding access to essential energy services for the poor or promoting economic development or both.

Thus, the pursuit of a sustainable energy agenda for developing countries requires leveraging the positive synergies of efforts devoted to achieving other societal and economic objectives, while minimizing potential conflicts between different public goals.

However, it is useful to first review some of the technology options available to developing countries that seek to meet their growing energy needs in a global environment that is marked by increasingly intractable environmental and resource constraints.

The usual list includes renewable energy technologies e. In addition, energy efficiency is often cited as a critically important and an often lower-cost complement to supply side improvements. Nevertheless, some options, especially technologies that are in very early stages of commercialization or require very large, initial capital investments or substantial outside expertise to operate, are likely to face additional obstacles to their use in developing countries.

Therefore, they represent important options for rural areas that lack electricity transmission and distribution infrastructures. Other low-carbon supply technologies are reviewed briefly at the end of this section , while energy efficiency is covered as part of the policy discussion in the section that follows. There are six broad categories of renewable energy technologies. They are biomass, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and marine. They can be tapped by using a variety of conversion technologies or processes to produce a range of energy services, including electricity, heat or cooling , fuels, mechanical power and illumination.

The competitiveness of different renewable technologies in different settings depends on their cost and performance, as well as the local cost and availability of fossil-based energy. All of these factors still vary widely and depend strongly on local conditions. Thus, their integration into a unified electricity grid can pose challenges, especially on a large scale, and may make them less competitive with conventional generating systems.

In addition, the modularity of many renewable energy technologies facilitates their deployment in relatively small increments. This can be advantageous in cost and risk to many developing countries. In the early s, only hydropower was competitive with electricity generated by conventional power plants for on-grid applications. However, expanding markets and experience-proven cost reductions have since made wind and geothermal power competitive or nearly competitive with other, conventional sources.

Solar photovoltaic technology remains more expensive, but can compete in some off-grid niche market applications. These comparisons are, of course, based on narrow criteria of strict cash flow and ignore such other advantages as environmental benefits, which renewable technologies can confer G8 RETF, , p. The figures are somewhat dated, but indicate the extent to which additional experience, larger-scale deployment and continued technology improvement may reduce future costs.

The prospects for continued cost reductions are promising in view of the recent rapid growth in renewable energy markets. Table 2. They would apply also to other relatively new, low-carbon technology options, such as carbon capture and sequestration. Figure 5 compares the decline in unit costs for wind and photovoltaic technology in the United States and Japan to the historic decline in the prices of gas turbines. The figures show that the declines were more rapid at first for gas turbines, but slowed as the technology matured.

This is typical of maturing technologies. In principle, energy can always be converted from one form to another. In actual practice, however, there will be some forms that will be preferred due to cost-effectiveness. Table 3 suggests some specific near-, medium-, and long-term options for supplying basic energy needs in rural areas using low-carbon technologies. The optimal mix of options in different settings will depend on costs, scale, location, timing and availability of local resources and expertise and a host of other factors.

In general, a greater diversity of supply options will help to reduce exposure to resource and technology risks. Of course, there are also trade-offs to consider. Some standardization can help to reduce deployment costs and make it easier to develop the local expertise required to operate and maintain new technologies and systems. Figure 5: Experience curves for photovoltaics, windmills, and gas turbines in Japan and the United States. In countries that have access to substantial coal supplies, conventional coal-fired steam-electric power plants are often the cheapest near-term option for the addition of large-scale, grid-connected generating capacity.

However, such investments risk locking-in decades of high carbon emissions and, unless modern pollution controls are used, substantial emissions of conventional air pollutants. These economy-environment trade-offs are difficult to resolve, especially for poorer countries that have pressing near-term needs for low-cost power.

For those countries, assistance from developed countries will be essential to offset the additional costs and technology demands of more expensive, but cleaner and lower-carbon, technologies. In the long-term, advanced coal technologies, such as integrated, combined-cycle gasification systems, coupled with carbon capture and sequestration must be successfully commercialized to make continued reliance on coal resources compatible with global carbon limits.

In contrast, nuclear technology is far more demanding. China and India are poised to make substantial investments in nuclear power during the next few decades. However, this technology is unlikely to be attractive to smaller developing countries in the short- to mid-term because of the operational and waste management challenges it presents and the high initial investment required. Advanced coal systems with carbon capture and sequestration are in an even earlier stage of the research, development and deployment trajectory.

Because of the high capital cost and the relatively unproved nature of the advanced coal systems, most analysts believe that developed countries will need to take the lead in demonstrating and commercializing this option. In contrast, the transportation sector has remained, with few exceptions, overwhelmingly dependent on petroleum fuels.

In much of the developing world, appliances are passed from owner to owner for decades. While this significantly reduces resources and energy used in manufacturing, it greatly boosts energy usage on a day-to-day basis. The same behaviour is common here in the world of rented property.

So if the developed world is more tuned into efficiency, why does our consumption continue to skyrocket? This question led to another series of cultural idiosyncrasies. Even worse, they're filled with power-sucking gadgets. Yes, the new generation of TV's sip, rather than suck power which wasn't the case a few years ago. But more of us are opting for bigger, more power-hungry screens, and we've got three or four instead of one.

In North America, we also don't think much about phantom power usage. Our computers, stereos and microwaves all use power while they're turned off — but unlike Europe, Asia and Australia, things like wall outlets with power-off switches aren't common. As efficiency rises, we're also seeing the rise of false economies. For example, we're buying more efficient CFL lightbulbs — but then leaving them on all the time.

My final exploration was energy efficiency tips published in different parts of the world. Plus, the EPA wants kudos for complying with a legal settlement, and another Trump official flees into the arms of an oil company. Do the earth a favor and invest in new, ultra-efficient bulbs. Dawone Robinson is righting the inequities that low-income communities of color face in accessing the benefits of energy efficiency—like more comfortable homes and lower energy bills, for starters. Her new book considers its future.

A number of governors who campaigned on renewables and other environmental causes won their races—and the chance to get their states moving on serious climate action.

Wind and solar are powering a clean energy revolution. Green skylines aren't just about shiny new skyscrapers. Mining, drilling, and burning dirty energy are harming the environment and our health. No demolition required. A few small tweaks to each room could dramatically shrink your carbon footprint. Residents of the southern city spend twice as much as the average American on power.

The prospect of geoengineering freaks us out. And it should—it signifies the lateness of our climate hour. We will keep you informed with the latest alerts and progress reports. Call on Congress to create jobs and fight the climate crisis Take Action.

A worker spraying blown fiberglass insulation between attic trusses. Defender of Energy Efficiency—and Equity. Justice Warrior on the Affordable Energy Front. Will China Save the Planet? Biofuels: Ethanol and Biomass-based diesel. Also in Hydropower explained Hydropower Where hydropower is generated Hydropower and the environment Tidal power Wave power Ocean thermal energy conversion.

Also in Biofuels explained Biofuels Ethanol Use and supply of ethanol Ethanol and the environment Biomass-based diesel fuels Use of biomass-based diesel fuel Biomass-based diesel and the environment.

Also in Wind explained Wind Electricity generation from wind Where wind power is harnessed Types of wind turbines History of wind power Wind energy and the environment. Also in Geothermal explained Geothermal Where geothermal energy is found Use of geothermal energy Geothermal power plants Geothermal heat pumps Geothermal energy and the environment.

Also in Solar explained Solar Photovoltaics and electricity Where solar is found and used Solar thermal power plants Solar thermal collectors Solar energy and the environment.

Secondary sources. Also in Electricity explained Electricity The science of electricity Magnets and electricity Batteries, circuits, and transformers Measuring electricity How electricity is generated Electricity in the United States Generation, capacity, and sales Delivery to consumers Use of electricity Prices and factors affecting prices Electricity and the environment. Also in Hydrogen explained Hydrogen Production of hydrogen Use of hydrogen.

Everyone uses energy People use energy for transportation, cooking, heating and cooling rooms, manufacturing, lighting, entertainment, and many other uses. Energy efficiency and energy conservation are related but different Sometimes people confuse energy efficiency with energy conservation.

Energy efficiency is using technology that requires less energy to perform the same function. Using a light-emitting diode LED light bulb or a compact fluorescent light CFL bulb that requires less energy than an incandescent light bulb to produce the same amount of light is an example of energy efficiency. Energy conservation is any behavior that results in the use of less energy.

Turning the lights off when leaving the room and recycling aluminum cans are both ways of conserving energy.