Re: Way OT: free CFL bulbs (fwd)

Jim MacKenzie wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Bigland-Pritchard"
> <mark@lowenergydesign.com>
> To: <linux@slg.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 10:30 PM
> Subject: Re: Way OT: free CFL bulbs (fwd)
>
>
>> But maybe most investors don't understand that... Certainly the
>> price of natural gas seems to follow that of crude oil despite being
>> mostly used for quite different purposes. I asked an economics
>> professor to explain it and basically he couldn't do so in any way
>> that made sense in terms of the actual facts of energy use.
>
>
> Many people in the world (especially in the US) still heat with
> heating oil, which is derived from crude oil. As heating oil prices
> go up (commensurate with crude oil), there is a financial pressure to
> convert to natural gas heating. This creates higher demand and thus
> higher prices.
>
> Also, demand for both is pretty inelastic - we don't tend to use that
> much less oil or natural gas when prices are high, at least in the
> short run (we may in the long run try to attain higher energy
> efficiency but that takes time and money). This supports higher prices.
>
> Jim
>
US figures for residential consumption in 2001:

fuel oil (i.e. heating oil) 0.71 quadrillion BTU (8.7 million households)
natural gas 4.84 quadrillion BTU (66.9 million households)

[ from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/byfuels/2001/byfuels_2001.html ]

The scope for conversion to gas is no longer all that great because most
of those who can do so already have.
Mark

> --
> "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."
> (Henry Spencer, 1987)
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Received on Thu Mar 29 09:30:23 2007