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Friday, May 27, 2011

China graph of the day

The spectacular growth of electricity consumption across China over the past-decade and half.



(Click to enlarge)

(HT: NYT)

2 comments:

sai prasad said...

Think About this--why is the use of ACs going up. Is it purely comfort. Is there something in our building design, urban planning which pushes us towards use of air-conditioning.

It is already said that most of the modern buildings are energy intensive, giving a total go-by to energy saving concepts like ventilation and use of sunlight.

Urbanomics said...

could not agree more. maybe, on a behavioural note, it makes sense to start discussing about the life-cycle costs (inclusive of energy and other maintenance charges) of buildings. how about having a life-cycle energy cost line item, alongside the estimate for a building? Will it focus stakeholders into paying greater attention to more energy efficient buildings? will property taxes, with a green component (though difficult to design) be an effective policy nudge to promote energy efficient buildigns?