Desarrollo energético en América Latina y la economía mundial

DESARROLLO ENERGÉTICO EN AMÉRICA LATINA y LA ECONOMíA MUNDIAL Berríe and Leslíe (1978) and CEPAL (1975). Indeed many oí the pre– sentations at this conference deal with these alternatives and there is therefore Httle need to dwell on them here. One point should be emphasized: energy efficiency and economic efficiency are not identical. No country's objective should be to save energy at all costo It has become fashionable in some circles to concentrate on "net energy" analysis, substituting energy flows within an economy for monetary flows (Gilliland, 1975). Often, the point is missed that a monetary value attached to any given object reflects a variety of factors, both technological and social. Prices reflect the "value" of things because resources used in the production of one item can be reallocated to produce another. As socia,} preferences for goods and services change, so do príces. This creates incentives for a realIocation of resources, such that the suppIy of more appreciated goods expands and that of less favored goods contracts. Energy use in an economy reflects mainly technological rela,tion– ships and not social tastes and preíerences direcdy. We must crearly distinguish between the demand for energy per se and demand for things that energy can provide. For example, people demand trans– portation. This can vary in quality defined in terms oí speed, com– fort, etc. At given prices, consumers will demand specific amounts of transportation of given qualíties and if prices change so do the amounts demanded. Theenergy per se that goes into the production of transportation is oí no concern to the consumer; only the price for each quality level is relevant. 1t is technology which determines how the final product is produced. For this reason economists tend to find "energy balance" methodologies of Httle use in making econo– mic decisions. (Loehr, 1976; Webb and Pearce, 1975). The differences between energy and economic efficiencies has been weIl illustrated in the case of the Unite States (Shurr and Darmstad· ter, 1976). Electricity is very energy inefficient in that many more energy units are burned up in electricity production than are availa– ble for end use. Electrification spread throughout the US primari1y during the years 1920-50 but was accompanied by a; decline in the rate oí energy use relative to GDP. The reason of course is that the switch from primary energy use to electrica1 energy, improves upon economic efficiency by enough to more than offset the energy ineffi· ciency of electrical generation. Thus, while it is not energy-efficient to produce electricity per se it is energy-effident in terms of getting more economic output per unit oí primary energy input. 232