Path Insistence: Comparing European and American Attitudes Toward Energy.

• Author: Nye, David E.
• Position: Statistical Data Included

Last year I gave two similar talks about energy at two universities on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean and had two entirely different responses.(1) At each university I made the case that in the 20th century the United States had unnecessarily overconsumed energy, and I argued that this was not a technological but a cultural problem with serious environmental implications. Both audiences agreed there was a problem, but in the discussions that followed, Americans focused on technical solutions, while Europeans focused on the cultural factors that made it difficult for the United States to change.

Americans spoke of wind and solar power, lasers, computers and new car designs; Europeans discussed the layout of roads and cities, patterns of consumption and social welfare. While these responses are by no means a substitute for a systematic survey, I believe they are representative of fundamental differences between how most Europeans and Americans understand energy.

I refer here not to specialists in energy policy but to ordinary voters and consumers, people who do not understand energy in terms of chemistry, mathematical equations or thermodynamics. While economists, scientists and engineers may think in these terms, everyone else relegates energy to the margin of consciousness, only thinking about it briefly when paying the utility bill or buying gasoline. Furthermore, not all consumers view energy in the same way. In Europe, for example, energy has historically been expensive and at times, scarce. Europeans generally have a sense of limits and see the necessity for alternatives. In the United States abundant energy is part of an accepted way of life, and it always seems to be available. This sense of energy abundance is the result of generations of experience. The average American consumer takes for granted the availability of oil, electricity, natural gas and other energy sources.

Compared with people elsewhere, Americans are less self-conscious about how unsustainable a high-energy society is and, historically speaking, less aware of the anomaly of intensive energy use, in part because they have enjoyed this privilege longer than anyone else. It follows that any constraints in the energy supply will be experienced as abnormal and unnatural.(2) Americans have become so "path dependent" that they only become aware of energy during a blackout or gasoline shortage.

Studies of technology commonly refer to path dependency as a problem for firms that become wedded to a particular form of production and move too slowly to adopt new processes. As one recent article on the power industry put it:

The evolution of the networked energy system is likely to be highly path-dependent. That is, system choices we have already made and will make over the next several decades will significantly influence the range of feasible future options.(3) The authors were referring to methods of producing and distributing power, but similar generalizations would apply to most industries.(4) While managers today are highly aware of the dangers of path dependency, most consumers are not. Americans have already built their energy choices into the infrastructure of everyday lire, in terms of their transportation, housing, shopping habits and leisure activities. The high-energy path that they take to be natural will hold attractive short-term advantages for perhaps the next two decades, but over the long term this path may lead to severe and almost insoluble environmental problems.

The question for Americans in the next century will be whether they will have the political will and the technological skill to reduce their energy consumption without disrupting their way of life. Until now they have relied primarily on technical improvements to deal with environmental consequences of intensive energy use. For example, they continue to use just as many appliances, but the design of those appliances is more energy-efficient. Americans drive more than ever, but their vehicles are fitted with pollution-control devices. Such technical improvements have meant that the middle class has not needed to reduce their consumption patterns. The lifestyle based on the automobile is all that most Americans born after 1920 can recall, for already by the end of that decade there was one car for every six people.

Yet the United States has been industrialized and suburbanized for a much shorter time than most people realize, with their high-energy society based on fossil fuels invented only in the last 120 years. During the nation's first two centuries, muscle and water power provided most of the energy. Unlike the Netherlands, windmills were not common, and unlike England, steam engines could scarcely be found anywhere before 1800. At the time of the American Revolution there were only three steam engines in the colonies, all pumping water. In 1840 wood supplied much more heat than coal, and more than 60,000 mills driven by water wheels provided far more energy than the nation's approximately 1,200 stationary steam engines.(5) In absolute terms, steam first began to provide the majority of American manufacturing power only in about 1875. Even as late as 1915 most farm work was still performed by human and animal force. At that time, only one American home in ten had electricity or a telephone.(6)

While for much of its early history the United States relied on muscle and water power for energy and wood for fuel, in the second half of the 19th century the country rapidly began to adopt steam power, followed soon after by electricity, the internal combustion engine and natural gas.(7) The history of energy use in America did not lag behind Britain or other nations, nor did it follow the same pattern at a different pace. Rather, the United States developed according to a distinctive pattern in which wood was always plentiful; water power was more important for a longer time than in most nations; steam engines were intensively exploited only after 1850; and both the internal combustion engine and electrification were adopted more quickly and more wholeheartedly than elsewhere. During the 20th century the nation developed into the highest energy-consuming country in history. In short, neither the pattern of U.S. energy development nor the scale of its use closely parallels any other nation's experience.

The United States has consumed more energy per capita than any other society in human history, and it remains the world's leading energy consumer. The United Nations Environmental Programme recently found that in 1950 per capita consumption for North America (Canada and the United States) was more than four times that in Europe and more than seven times the world average. In 1990 a North American was using twice as much energy as a European and 10 times as much as the average Latin American. A North American family of four consumed as much as an African village of 107. The United Nations Environmental Programme estimates that by 2015 these inequalities will worsen to the point that the average American family will demand as much energy as 127 Africans or 42 Latin Americans.(8)

These contrasts between the developed and developing world should not suggest, however, that the problem of energy overconsumption in the United States can be explained away by a higher standard of living or a more advanced use of technology Many Europeans enjoy the same quality of life as Americans while using half the per capita energy For example, in 1989 per capita energy consumption in West Germany was 5,391 kilograms (coal equivalent) at a time when U.S. per capita consumption was 10,124 kilograms.(9) This sharp difference in energy use did not, however, reflect a lower standard of living. In the same year German workers averaged 24 percent more in hourly compensation than American workers.(10) Compared with American households in 1990, 88 percent of West German families owned their own washing machines versus 76 percent of American families, while 97 percent of West German families owned a television set versus 93 percent of American families. But only 17 percent of Germans owned an electric clothes dryer--a high-energy product--compared to 51 percent of Americans. Likewise, West Germans chose to drive more energy-efficient cars and more commonly used railroads and other forms of public transportation.(11) Meanwhile, to extend the comparison with West Germany in another direction, East Germany used considerably more energy per capita--7,631 kilograms--but nevertheless achieved a much lower standard of living by almost any measure.(12)

As these comparisons suggest, higher energy use does not correlate directly with a higher standard of living. The problem of America's high energy use is profoundly cultural, by which I mean it has to do with patterns of material life, habits, values and expectations--patterns formed over 150 years. Since technological systems are path dependent, it is useful to look at how and why ordinary Americans have become so wedded to such a high-energy path.

LIFE IN EXCESS: THE AMERICAN WAY

Too often, energy history is understood primarily as a question of developing supply, and much of the literature focuses on such topics as techniques used to build dams and mills, or processes to extract fossil fuels or to improve steam engine efficiency. However, one can also look at energy history in terms of demand. Consumers have often been the driving force behind the expansion of energy use. If one looks at the rapid increase in American energy demand from the middle of the 19th century until the present, one is struck by how this increase parallels the growth of the middle class, the rise of cities and the development of strong consumer demand. Through these years one fact stands out: Americans have almost never been short of energy. Unlike Europe, where in many areas wood was already scarce by the Renaissance, the United States had an abundance of wood that...