International Law

WSJ on power saving

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

I learned a couple of interesting facts from this article on power saving in Japan in the Wall Street Journal.

Electricity usage is up by 35% from 1990 with unchanged population. Going back to 1990 levels would solve the summer shortage immediately.

About half of the street lights in Tokyo are turned off right now, as well as many elevators in public buildings.

As a Government spokesman remarked, it is hard to save more energy, since Japan already has very high energy efficiency. Energy intensity (as measured in tons of oil equivalent per million GDP) is already half of the US and about one seventh of China (see page 27 of the 2010 World Bank report “Winds of Change – East Asia’s Sustainable Energy Future).

However, the article is off by a factor of ten when reporting the shortage expected in summer as “one million kilowatt”. The actual figure is 10 Gigawatt.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on March 28, 2011 (boomark / email).