GDP/Mile in various countries in 2008 - see text for details of methods
I can't find any international data that fully harmonizes with US VMT data. However, at Eurostat, I did find data on passenger miles in cars in various European countries. In the US, VMT will not be very different from car passenger miles (there are about 10% multi-occupancy cars, but offsetting that about 8% of vehicles on the road are not cars). So I used the IMF PPP GDP data, as well as the European mile data, and US VMT data from the FHWA to compute the above comparison. As you can see, the US is toward the bottom of the European countries, but not off the scale. The relative oil efficiency of most of Europe appears to come from fuel efficiency of the average vehicle more than being less car dependent.
Dude, you said it a few days back!
ReplyDelete"People really want to drive."
BTW, on a different topic....
If one accepts Timothy Garrett's argument for a very strong link between real GDP and global energy consumption, then the US isn't becoming more energy efficient lately. i.e. The trade deficit (~5% of GDP) represents a chunk of the world economy that is really part of the US. Real goods and services flowing in one direction and paper promises flowing back. Those goods and services are either consumed or utilized for GDP. Either way, they should be added to America's bill for determining efficiency.
Still probably becoming more oil efficient though.
By 'utilized for GDP' I mean that they become part of the capital stock that is used to produce GDP, not that they are counted as GDP.
ReplyDeleteWell, the raw energy import portion of the trade deficit would have to be handled differently to avoid double counting.
ReplyDelete[Apologies for too many messages]