>Suprisingly this (raising gasoline taxes) probably is NOT the best way to reduce energy consumption.
Doug replied
>Hmm, why not? Greenhouse gas emissions are lots lower in Europe and Japan than they are in the U.S. Per US$ [PPP basis] of GDP, the U.S. emits 0.67 kg of CO2; the Netherlands, 0.47; and Japan, 0.38. Annual energy use per capita is 4,035 kg (oil-equivalent) in Japan, 4,738 in the Netherlands, and 7,937 in the U.S. Surely energy prices have something to do with this. Of course, the U.S. population is much more scattered than the Netherlands & Japan, but one reason it's so scattered is that energy is absurdly cheap here...
>Doug
Hi Doug. Yes, gas prices are higher in Europe. But regulation is more stringent too. My argument was not that price means nothing, but that regulation means more. So I've decided to back my argument with some modest statistical analysis. I compared energy efficiency with both energy prices, and regulatory stringency. Not surprisingly, both correlate. But where efficiency correlates with price at around -0.45, it correlates with regulatory rigor at about -0.55. Assuming that in this case correlation does equal causation that would mean that price is responsible for roughly 20% of the difference , and that degree of regulation is responsible for 30% of the difference.
I used the following sources:
For Energy Efficiency: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1g..xls Table E1g World Primary Energy Consumption Per Dollar of Gross Domestic product, 1980-1999 (Btu per 1990 U.S. Dollars Using Market Exchange Rates)
For Regulatory Rigor:
I could not find a source that directly measured regulatory stringency in energy efficiency.. I was however able to find a study that ranks the rigor of environmental regulation. The study itself looks well done to me; environmental regulation seems like a pretty good proxy for energy efficiency regulation. The study I used is::
Global Environment & Trade Study: Research, Policy Building, and Intellectual Capicity Building since 1994 Measuring environmental Performance - Table 7 Regulatory Rigor http://www.gets.org/gets/library/admin/uploadedfiles/Measuring_National_Environmental_Performance_a.pdf
( (Ranking based on GTC Questionare))
For Fuel Prices, I used:
Gasoline and Diesel prices 1998 - cents/liter (market exchange rates) http://www.zietlow.com/gtz/fuel.pdf
Because I want this message read, I will send my tables in a separate post - so that formatting nightmare that long tables provide in plain text e-mail does not automatically move this onto delete lists.
If anyone with Wintel machine wants to play with the data, I currently have it in Excel and Lotus (including graphs).
By tomorrow I will have all this nicely laid out in pdf format that can be sent to anyone. I will also create a tab delimited text file to allow data import into most software. E-mail me off list if you want either a spreadsheet, or OS independent formatted presentation and data.