The above graph shows OECD Europe oil consumption, monthly, from 1995 through June of this year. (The data are from the EIA - Eurostat only has annual data through 2009). There is a clear seasonal signal with consumption apt to peak each year in the late autumn and be in a trough in the spring.
You can also see that consumption peaked in 2006 and has fallen about 10% since then (similar to the fall in US consumption). There was a small recovery in 2010, but consumption was down further again in the first half of 2011. It's hard to see how the data could have rebounded in the second half given the ongoing financial crisis in the Eurozone but we'll have to wait a few months to know for sure.
Stuart, I really think you ought to mention the sunspot activity right now. When the National Academies say we're vulnerable to a Carrington-type event, or even one like a much less extreme 1921 storm, and we have a fairly large sunspot, that's already fired off an X class flare, pointing at Earth for the next week or two, it seems like something of a risk to global civilization. Or it's at least a risk to North America, Asia, and Europe.
ReplyDeleteNo, we're not likely to get a storm bad enough to take out the electric grid for years (a possibility mentioned in the report), but almost no one expected the Fukushima tidal wave either. The most dangerous conditions described in the NAS study were exactly what's coming together right now - large and active sunspot, that's pointed toward Earth, in the fall. You can read the National Academies book on the topic here.
It would seem reasonable to suppose that oil consumption is a pretty good measure of economic activity (oil consumption is notoriously inelastic, historically). But I thought we'd been told that economic activity had now surpassed 2008 levels. Not what this shows.
ReplyDeleteA shock of historically very high oil prices preceded the crash, which might have caused some additional turn to alternative energies, but hardly this much, surely.
Our jobless recovery looks like a very partial recovery from this perspective.
It would seem reasonable to suppose that oil consumption is a pretty good measure of economic activity (oil consumption is notoriously inelastic, historically). But I thought we'd been told that economic activity had now surpassed 2008 levels. Not what this shows.
ReplyDeleteA shock of historically very high oil prices preceded the crash, which might have caused some additional turn to alternative energies, but hardly this much, surely.
Our jobless recovery looks like a very partial recovery from this perspective.