Europe's Quiet Efficiency Is Paying Off Bigger Than Anyone Admits
Europe's "Less" Is Doing More Than Anyone Gives It Credit For
When the Strait of Hormuz shut and Brent jumped 58% year-on-year, Europe barely flinched: the EU trimmed its 2026 growth forecast by just 0.3 points. That resilience comes from decades of quiet efficiency gains—44% less energy per euro of output than in 1995, with a third of that since 2019. The article argues GDP misses this success, and contrasts Spain's renewable-heavy grid with Italy's gas dependence.
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.
- delichon
> 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
4.04 / 7.77 ≈ 0.52, so the U.S. uses about 48% less energy per dollar than in 1995, versus 44% per euro for the EU. So pretty much the same as across the pond.
- 0x_rs
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..
- jdlshore
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.
- baxtr
> 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.
- braingravy
If ever there was a time to insert a few key visuals to illustrate your point…