Desarrollo energético en América Latina y la economía mundial

DESARROLLO ENERGÉTICO EN AMÉRICA LATINA y LA ECONOMÍA MUNDIAL such as powering irrigatíon pumps, which are considered criticaI to development. The heavy reliance on non-commercial IueIs by the LDCs is oI relevance to energy consumption levels, because oI their typicalIy low efficiency in use. AIter aH, what matters to energy consumers is not so much the gross amount of energy used, but the energy services received (or "useful" energy). Non-commercial fuels, and particu– lady Iuelwood, the most widely used form oI non-commercial energy. are typically used in ways which yield very low efficiencies. Thus, fuelwood is mainly used for cooking on open fires, in which only lO to 15 percent oI the gross input is received in the fol' of useful energy. These efficiendes are much lower than those achieved in the use of commercial fueIs. Oil and gas, for exampIe, are used at approxi– mate efficiencies oI 60 to 70 percent. This means that those areas using primal'ily commercial IueIs (the industrialized countries) will receive more energy services or useful energy for a given energy input than those countries (the deveIoping countries) which depend lar– geIy on low efficiency non-commerciaI {uels. An attempt to take differences in efficiencies into effect in calcula. ting the energy intensities of various areas is made in tabIe 1. The ave– rage end-use efficiency of commercial {ueIs is assumed to be 50 percent in both industriaIized and developing countries, and an average effi– ciency of non-commercial fueIs, applying only to developing countries, is taken to be 10 percent. Together these yield an average efficiency of the overalI {ueI supply oI 35 percent in developing countries and 50 percent in industrialized countries (see tabIe 1, Hne 12). Taking these differing efficiencies ¡nto account indicates that the "useIul" energy intensity oI the industrialized countries is about double the "useful" energy intensity of the developing countries (line 14) . Thu8 differences in the average efficiency of Iuel supplies account Ior part oI the differences in energy consumption between these two groups of countries, widering the gap between them. EMBODIED ENERGY Another reason is the amount of energy embodied in foreign trade. So far, the measurement of energy consumption has incorporated energy production plus imports oI energy minus exports of energy. In addition to this energy directly consumed, energy is also consumed embodied in imports of a wide range of goods and services. Similarly, 22