Global Energy

It seems retirement stock portfolios aren’t the only things rapidly declining in the United States over the past few months. In a more uplifting turn of events, energy use in the U.S. declined almost 5 last year, good for the most significant energy reduction the country has ever seen. To put that in further perspective, though the mainstream push for “going green” is still relatively new, the government began tracking such statistics in 1949.Of course, a view held by many analysts is that this isn’t entirely good news. While the reduced levels of energy are no doubt a welcome sight for the environment, they could be interpreted as an equally disheartening look in the mirror for the national economy. After all, energy use tends to decrease alongside GDP per capita. In other words, when people have less money, they buy less, do less and use less, all across the board. It would be a nice to believe the full 5 was constituted by American’s making responsible energy decisions; however, it’s far more likely the statistic is merely a manifestation of equally reduced individual means.A more wholesomely encouraging trend is the major increase in the use of wind power in the United States, marking a decreased reliance on fossil fuels. Overall, the percentage use of renewable energy sources within U.S. border is up, thanks largely to generous grants and funding by the United States Department of Energy in order to promote further wind energy development. The increase in wind energy use is believed to be the main cause of a dip in coal usage nationwide. This could be a further augmented by a shift from electricity to natural gas, a positive trend considering the ongoing harvest of newly discovered shale gas resources in the southern states, believed to be quite abundant in supply. Overall, 2009 in the U.S. saw good with bad, but while the economy is cyclical, once earth’s resources are depleted they are impossible to replenish , so in that sense, it was a banner year.