Next year in Copenhagen, world leaders will attempt to negotiate a new deal to address global climate change to supplant the current Kyoto Protocol. One issue they face is the huge disparity between countries with economies that are highly energy efficient and those that are not.
Japan is the leader. It has very little domestic energy production, and therefore an incentive to treat its expensive energy imports frugally. The island-nation uses 4,500 BTU’s per dollar of gross national product, while the other top ten countries such as Denmark, Switzerland and Ireland use less than 7,500 BTUs per dollar of GNP. The U.S. is a laggard — with 9000 BTUs per dollar of GNP — but the nations of the old Soviet Union are the poster children for energy inefficiency. Ukraine, for example uses 138,000 BTUs of energy for every dollar of GNP, which is roughly 30 times the level of consumption in Japan.
Read more about the global Environmental Performance Index in Forbes...