Chart of the day: China's per $ GDP of electricity usage

Now, we know from history that advanced economies are able to generate one percent of growth in GDP while increasing their energy usage less than one percent (an energy elasticity below 1.0).  Undeveloped economies tend to do it the other way around (taking more than an additional one percent of energy consumption to generate that one percent growth in GDP).  Rising economies are somewhere in between.

This chart measures something similar:  how many kilowatt hours are expended in the generation of a dollar of GDP.

No surprise:  Old Core economies (UK, Japan, US) use the least and New Core ones (Indonesia, Brazil, India) use substantially more.  Presumably, if the chart showed underdeveloped Gap economies, they'd all be clustered at the top, and yet, you'd have to wonder if some of them wouldn't beat China's jump-out-at-you number that's more than double India's (which is almost double America's number).

The giveaway?  Notice how low the taxes are on electricity in China and India, meaning the governments keep it cheap and--thus--consumers treat it as an inexpensive resource.

Two takeaways for me:  1) China is paying too high a price (as is the world WRT CO2 emissions) for its growth; and 2) America could do a lot better too, possibly through higher taxation or other incentives.