Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For

> Every euro of EU output now takes 44% less energy than it did in 1995, and more than a third of that improvement has landed since 2019.

This is positioned as the key fact of the whole argument, presented first and repeated. But they do not attempt an equivalent US figure. So here's mine.

https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec1_19.pdf

  1K BTU Consumption per $ of GDP
  1995: 7.77
  2025: 4.04

CTRL+F "manufacturing": 0 results for a website called "oilprice", instead it has this line: "An economy that produces more while burning less isn't stagnating…it's just getting more efficient, and there's no headline number for that, so it mostly doesn't get written about.", which is false, these are different things. EU economy shifted from manufacturing to services in the past decades and especially after the GFC (from which it never recovered in some sectors), losing millions of those jobs in the process, and an output decline in the 20% range, France leading the way with the industrialization collapse. Services are inherently less energy sensitive than manufacturing and there's no question the latter, already struggling, hit another wall in 2022 because the continent has zero energy independence. If you cannot produce your energy your manufacturing will always be at the mercy of macroeconomic events, and your consumption will always depend on another country's production. It takes 20 seconds to generate an AI article full of fabrications but orders of magnitude more to properly correct it..

I think this is AI. It’s not as bad as some, but it’s got that breathless enthusiasm and drones on and on without ever quite getting to its point.

> Gas set the price of electricity in 15% of hours in Spain this year against 89% in Italy, and when Hormuz closed, Spain grew 0.7% while Italy got flagged as the eurozone's most exposed economy.

It's a shame that Italy spent so little on solar compared to Spain. Sun shining there as well last time I checked.

ai; dr, sorry

If ever there was a time to insert a few key visuals to illustrate your point…

We'll see after the winter. Industrial decline may also lead to reductions in energy use. And increased costs in coutnries where EU "exported" it's energy heavy industry may come back and bite, too.

I would not make conclusions from a short 5 month price shock.

> The EU now runs on roughly 44 percent less energy per euro of output than it did in 1995, and more than a third of that improvement has landed since 2019 alone.

Is this really a de-industrialization story? Is manufacturing much more efficient since that time, or has the economy moved onto other less energy intensive tasks, say through outsourcing them to Asia?