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I'd be a bit wary of using energy use that directly as indicator. Yes, it is a broad measure of industrialization, however:

Suppose a country goes on a broad national campaign to insulate drafty houses. That drops energy use, but has no corresponding drop in living standard.

i.e. there is some sort of measure/factor for efficient application of energy needed for it to really be meaningful

Run me through your numbers. Where did the 33% drop in per-capita energy use come from? What order of magnitude do you think is draft reductions?

Because if that were true I'd expect the UK would be a world-leading paradise with vast energy surpluses and everyone having a high old time in great comfort. That isn't the vibe they're giving off. They look like a nation with a slow-rolling energy crisis and a social contract that is coming under quite a bit of pressure because of it. Happy people don't vote for Nigel Farage.

Got it. LED bulbs are destroying the social contract. One would call you a luminary but it seems you’d prefer being called predominantly a producer of hot air, like the old incandescents, instead.

Also, the US is down 30% as well since peak MWh/person. If you had invested $1 in the S&P 500 at that peak, in about 1970, you’d have about $300 now. Seems like energy use mightn’t be all that coupled to economic success, but if you want to call the US since 1970 a failed society I’m not going to stop you.

> Also, the US is...

The US just elected Trump, where he won the popular vote. And are experiencing a sort of general crisis across financial, military and political domains. I don't think the US is particularly stable either, they just cope a bit better than the Europeans and are more flexible in calling for change when things aren't working out. Although I doubt it'll help them in the short term.

A) OK, so on the one hand we could blame $2 trillion going to billionaires in 2024 alone, near enough $6000 for every person in the country, with evidence of any trickle down effect being a thing still outstanding, but evidence of their political effect as clear as an outstretched arm over DC.

B) Or we could blame people not keeping five terrible refrigerators with no insulation at full blast instead of one good modern one.

I mean it’s probably not option A entirely, there’s sure to be options C through to Z too, but I’m probably not gonna consider B overly relevant.

>Where did the 33% drop in per-capita energy use come from?

That's kinda my point - we don't know the answer. The 33% could be a bad thing (deindustrialization), or a good thing (energy efficiency) or the most like - a mix.

It's largely a meaningless datapoint on its own.

> or a good thing (energy efficiency)

It can't be energy efficiency. Energy efficiency causes energy consumption to increase. That's basic economics [0]. The argument, at best, is that the energy efficiency improvements are cancelling out the energy availability problems to the point where quality of life stays about the same. Although the type of efficiencies gains we'd need to see to cancel out a 33% drop would be so staggering to the point where it'd be a major deal to the point where nobody would be able to stop pointing at the UK's outrageous success as an international beacon of Quality of Life improvements.

The actual message seems to be that they're having a lot of troubles and QoL is dropping.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

> Energy efficiency causes energy consumption to increase. That's basic economics [0].

Switching from incandescents to LEDs reduces electricity consumption by up to 90% to produce the same amount of light. I mean sure, someone will have twice as much light in their life after that switch. Heck, show me the person who now have five times more light bulbs in their ceiling.

But show me the person who now has ten bulbs in the ceiling to make your statement marginally true, or twenty times, increasing annually, to make it representative of your point.

No, really. Show me the person who has twenty times the holes in the ceiling than originally designed, twenty times the light, they must have gone permanently blind. It’d be fascinating to meet that person. Given the confidence with which you stated that it’s basic economics, is it you?

Modern houses do have a lot more lightbulbs if you feel like keeping count, I saw a kitchen with something like 6 or 7 of them recently. Although I'd assume the big uptick would be industrial consumers. Particularly 24/7 operations with lots of opportunities for lighting. Or people would start installing better streetlamps as the ability to do so improved. But the point I'd like to make is that your lack of imagination isn't going to overcome the laws of economics no matter how much you can't imagine change. "I can't imagine basic results playing out" isn't an argument for why they won't, it just means you don't understand the situation well. Jevons' paradox flows pretty directly from the laws of supply and demand and the observation that energy demand is highly elastic because it does anything and everything.

And an important concept that you may be unaware of is 'fungibility' - that means some goods (energy being a prime example) can be repurposed across a wide range of activities and not just lighting. So if people don't need to put as much energy into lighting then they take the energy they would have used and put it to something else, like more comforts in their life. It is a very reliable trend.

Got it. It’s a basic law of economics that all kitchens must be lit like the surface of the sun by the end of the century otherwise we’ll all be in economic doom.

Also pretty sure that Jevons’ paradox might actually not apply indefinitely for a finite resource with a real price attached to it, but how does me, the ignoramus, dare to stand in the way of this ever more exponentially enlightened (literally) economic powerhouse.

This is the weirdest bit I’ve seen someone stick to on this site for some time, and that’s saying something.

Here’s an important concept you seem to be unaware of: elasticity of demand.

So let me get this right, solar panels on the roof, heat pumps, better fridges, and better insulation among other things are a crisis that will lead, in comparison, to the downfall of Western civilisation?

Jeez, I better randomly turn on a resistive space heater in the middle of summer when I’m not home so we can all live better lives somehow.

Do you think I should randomly flail my arms about in the hope it’ll somehow make more dividends for my bank of choice? Just want to double-check.

> So let me get this right, solar panels on the roof, heat pumps, better fridges, and better insulation among other things are a crisis that will lead, in comparison, to the downfall of Western civilisation?

Well the data does seem to incline in that direction. Particularly the UK, as far as I can tell it is impossible to be both intellectually honest and believe that a 33% (!) reduction in per capita energy is good for people's living standards. Someone'd have to be wilfully ignorant of Jevons' paradox, the only way to get that drop off is some sort of squeeze in their ability to access energy which isn't fun to live through. I feel for the poor who are being forced to live with that and be told that they're better off and shouldn't believe their lying eyes. It also neatly explains a lot of the political trends the UK has undergone in the last decade like the high debt level and general dissatisfaction with the leadership.

Ah yes, the activity of “accessing energy”, the very relatable and not at all abstract real activity that we fellow humans perform multiple times a day.

And here I thought we did “normal” things like “switch on the light” and notice that an LED still works just as well as an incandescent.

Or some decide to turn on the dishwasher instead of doing the dishes by hand, which does it far more efficiently.

Just wondering, since you seem to know, how do I make the money directly come out of the wall? Do I need to turn the crappy old five space heaters all to setting three to get all the money? Or should I just use the reverse cycle AC at a comfortable temperature like a normal person?

Also, you’re calling the US’ economic success since 1970 a failure, since that also saw a drop in per capital use of 33%, so I’ll happily trade you all the money you made since 1970 for a pile of wooden logs, seems like that’d be a great deal for you, eh?

> Or some decide to turn on the dishwasher instead of doing the dishes by hand, which does it far more efficiently.

That would increase measured energy consumption per capita.

> Also, you’re calling the US’ economic success since 1970 a failure

They've gone from the world's leading hegemon to arguably 2nd largest economy vs China which is now the world's industrial superpower. And indeed there are a lot of notable turns for the worse [0] in the US that started coming up from the 1970s. I do think there is a case to be made the the US's post-70s economic policy has been pretty lackluster. And there does seem to be a real problem that set in around 2000, it has been pretty much worse-to-worse steps since then. The energy trend is related.

> And here I thought we did “normal” things like “switch on the light” and notice that an LED still works just as well as an incandescent.

How much energy do you think that is saving? Order of magnitude?

[0] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

The only graphs the relate energy consumption to anything else within the same graphs are 1) a curve implying we ought to be using 400 kW per capital use of continuously, enough to power hundreds of homes most of the time and 2) one that shows GDP flying off with no regard for per capital use of consumption of power.

I feel compelled to ask, how are you using your personal 400 kW today? Surely you must be using that amount since you think it’s vital to your personal prosperity. Is it Bitcoin mining or… honestly I can’t think of anything else?

> That would increase measured energy consumption per capita.

Not if the water is heated I would have thought is the understood assumption. But if you want to wash them in near enough ice water while pumping a substation into your crypto operation, then you do you.

Also, congrats. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bolder claim than calling the US stock market since 1970 an underperformer. Let us know that we evidently don’t, but make sure you’re not backtesting there with 50 years of hindsight. Make a prediction of similar boldness. I’m probably not gonna put money on that though, just wanna put that up my index fund investing front.

1. It is "per capita" not "per capital".

2. All the graphs relate to energy, energy is the economy. It is literally impossible to fabricate/transport any good or run any service without some sort of energy consumption happening. The reason the energy trend matters so much is because it leads every activity.

> I feel compelled to ask, how are you using your personal 400 kW today?

There is, and I speak with a great deal of literalness when I say this, no aspect of either of our lifestyles that doesn't involve consuming energy. I suspect you have a poor understanding of what energy is.

> Also, congrats. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bolder claim than calling the US stock market since 1970 an underperformer

An economy isn't the stock market. And I don't know how you made that mistake since just in another of your post you were complaining that too much money was going to billionaires! The stock market has been going great, the economy has been going so-so trending towards poorly.

I mean I’m of the weird belief that moving an item from point A to point B fundamentally uses, more or less, amount of energy x regardless of whether it’s 1950 or 2000 or 2050, but if you want to make the laws of Physics obey exponential growth to make sure we all remain economically prosperous then good luck to you.

Maybe not in this universe, but good luck to you nevertheless.

And yeah that was a typo. I guess that’s what happens when you use but a few watts on a mobile phone instead of an AI on the latest RTX to burn the equivalent half a log for every letter. I guess I’m not respecting the needs of the economy too much by doing that, eh?

In the US the amount of energy used to create an inflation adjusted dollar of GDP has been declining since 1949.

https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T...

China appears to have a similar progress.

Which makes sense as energy is a costly input and so using less to get the same result is a good thing.

In other documents the EIA list people moving to Southern states as one of several factors driving this trend.

Just moving from coal and gas plants of 40% efficiency to 60% combined cycle gas plants would make everything consuming the generated electricity use 1/3rd less primary energy with no changes on their end.

> In the US the amount of energy used to create an inflation adjusted dollar of GDP has been declining since 1949.

That does more to cast doubt on the GDP than anything else; a lot of the commonly used metrics are flawed. One of the interesting things about the Trump campaign(s) is his message is typically that the economy is bad and it seems a lot of people have on-the-ground experiences that match that.

Since GDP dissociated from energy use in the 70s, I tend to side with the people who think the metrics are flawed. If GDP isn't a proxy for energy it isn't obvious what it is measuring or why anyone should care about that - for all that people do for reasons that are hard to unravel. There is a such a thing as intangible wealth but on aggregate it still pales compared to the tangible sort that requires energy.

> Just moving from coal and gas plants ...

One of the reasons I link the OurWorldInData series is they include fudge factors to try and account for that. If you look at the graph you can see it uses something they call the substitution method.

I get the vague feeling this has been pointed out to you before but maybe not.

The statistical review of World Energy that they source the data from does do the substitution method.

And it knows that plant efficiency is increasing over time so it updates the compensation factor it uses. That means that over time a nuclear plant producing the exact same amount of electricity every year will look like a declining primary energy usage.

The effect is slightly muted by their use of a global average efficiency conversion factor. An actual country deploying globe leading efficiency fossil fuel plants would see a greater effect in the direct, un-substituted numbers as less fossil fuels will be needed to generate the same amount of electricity.

I just double check on GDP [1] as well rather than GDP per capita.

It is clear post 2007, UK and France and perhaps Germany as well had 15 years of stagnation. Using Bank of England 's calculator [2] £10.00 in 2008 would equal to £16.00 today.

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...

[2] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in...

You make good points, thanks for sharing. May I also add onto your speculation by saying that Brexit was a symptom of bad governance in general, and the energy crisis is a symptom too.

I have a feeling that somehow your point is going to be proven (or disproven) rather soonish, considering Trump's total turn on renewables and energy output ("Drill, baby, drill"). We might actually find out if the old school American way can indeed make a significant difference on the average guy...