Törölt nick Creative Commons License 2004.03.29 0 0 140
[“Despite Growth, Energy Demand…” slide] Despite all this growth, energy demand is, ironically, still in its infancy. Only 12% of the world’s population uses 54% of all of our energy. A third of the world still has no access at all to modern energy, and uses ancient energy: animal dung, waste, residue, and charcoal. The other 45% of the world uses one-fourth of the energy consumed by the 12% - that’s us. Even in the “us,” you vary from the United States - using 65 barrels of energy per person to Japan, UK, and Germany - using 30-32.
[“Why U.S. Uses So Much Energy” slide] That raises another interesting question: “Why does the U.S. use so much energy, and shouldn’t we merely tighten our belt like Europe and Japan do?” Well, let me tell you why we do use so much: It is the size of the U.S., it’s the lower 48 states, and the fact that that created a massive use of automobiles. We also decided, for one reason or another, that we couldn’t tackle mass transportation, which is a key reason Europe and Japan use less energy than the U.S. Traffic congestion turns out to be our biggest gas guzzler. After World War II, we basically decided, for one reason or another, that we wanted to move to the suburbs. We had footprints of houses that were larger than the norm, and we also had ceiling heights that were larger - that just used a lot more energy. Our affluence is what drives U.S. energy use. The U.S. is 31% of the global GDP, and we’re 17% of world total energy use. So, we are actually a very efficient user of energy. There is a suspicion that we all share, that it is the SUV that makes us such a great energy user. Let me just tell you the numbers - I am a numbers person. We have 72 million SUVs and light trucks on the road. They use about 4.5 gallons per miles less than the average passenger car. If these SUV’s and light trucks suddenly converted to passenger car energy-efficiency, it would save about 650,000 barrels per day. But it will take a total turnover of their fleet and this takes over 3 decades to implement. It is the affluence and size of the U.S. that led us to where we are.

http://smalley.rice.edu/Presentations/Transcript%20MIT%20Forum%20Matt%20Simmons.doc