Energy quality is the relative economic usefulness per heat equivalent unit of different fuels and electricity. One way of measuring energy quality is the marginal product of the fuel, which is the marginal increase in the quantity of a good or service produced by the use of one additional heat unit of fuel. These services also include services received directly from energy by consumers. Some fuels can be used for a larger number of activities and/or for more valuable activities. For example, coal cannot be used directly to power a computer whereas electricity can. The marginal product of a fuel is determined in part by a complex set of attributes unique to each fuel: physical scarcity, capacity to do useful work, energy density, cleanliness, amenability to storage, safety, flexibility of use, cost of conversion, and so on. But also the marginal product is not uniquely fixed by these attributes. (more…)
Statistics on national production levels and indicators of environmental pressure have been collected during the past few decad ...
The long-term prospects for the U.K. economy are inevitably uncertain, and the most recent Department of Energy long-term proje ...
Energy is consumed by various segments of the economy, including households, commercial establishments, manufacturing enterpris ...
In terms of aggregate health effects, household solid fuel use is currently the most important source of indoor air pollution i ...
From prehistory until the Industrial Revolution, most energy sources used by humans were localized (i.e., available within 5–10 mil ...
Energy is consumed by various segments of the economy, including households, commercial establishments, manufacturing enterprises, and electric power generators. Only a portion of total energy demand is sensitive to temperature changes. (more…)
Here, the sensitivity of energy demand to climate is measured two ways. The first method uses elasticities that provide simple summ ...
To determine the effects of past climate trends on global energy consumption, the econometric equations providing the degree day el ...
Establishing the impact of climate change on energy demand requires a measure of heating and cooling requirements. In the United St ...
Although the focus of many policy studies of climate change is on establishing the causal links between anthropogenic systems, emis ...
Climatologists generally agree that there is accumulating evidence that a warming trend has been occurring since the mid-1960s. The ...
