This is the 10th in a series of posts on energy consumption in Missouri. I have compared Missouri energy consumption to four surrounding states, energy consumption by source, and in my last three post, I reported total energy consumption by sector, per capita energy consumption by sector, and energy consumption by sector per unit of economic output (not adjusted for inflation). For a list of all previous posts, see here. In this post I discuss consumption of energy by sector per unit of inflation-adjusted economic output.

The graph at right shows for each major sector the number of Btu consumed per dollar of economic output in Missouri. The dollars are inflation adjusted, and the graph considers electrical power to be a separate sector. The shape of the graph looks very different from the one in the previous post because this graph only covers the years 1987-2010, where the previous one went back to 1963. One of the challenges I have encountered in trying to explore this information is that every website presents its data differently, and they don’t always cover the same years. The sources I consulted did not have Missouri’s Gross State Product for years prior to 1987. In addition, the data was in two different series, one using 1997 dollars, and one using 2005 dollars. The 1997 dollars have been adjusted to 2005 dollars.

The second graph on the right shows the number of Btu consumed per dollar of economic output in Missouri by sector, adjusted for inflation. This time, electricity is considered a source of energy within the four other sectors. The Purple line represents transportation, the green line represents industrial, and the red line represents commercial, and the blue line represents residential. More energy is consumed in the transportation sector than the other three, although it appears that the residential sector is about to overtake transportation. In all of the sectors, fewer Btu were consumed per dollar of GSP in 2010 than 1987.

The third graph at right shows consumption of electrical power by sector per unit of inflation-adjusted GSP. The transportation sector is not a significant consumer of electricity and has been omitted. When we looked at per capita consumption, the graph showed that per capita energy consumption had skyrocketed. When we looked at electricity consumption per unit of GSP, it suggested that per unit of economic output, electrical consumption has decreased significantly in all three sectors. Looking at it per unit of inflation-adjusted GSP, it appears that energy consumption per unit of GSP declined slightly in the industrial sector, and increased significantly in the residential and commercial sectors.

The trends for per capita energy consumption appear to be somewhat different from the trends for energy consumption per unit of inflation-adjusted economic output. To make sense of all this, one should probably assume that economic output per person has grown significantly, and that is why energy consumption skyrocketed on a per capita basis, but much less so on an inflation-adjusted GSP basis.

Sources:

For energy consumption: The data for this post is not found on a single source. It was pieced together from data available at the State Energy Data System(SEDS): 1960-2010 (Complete), Missouri State Profile and Energy Estimates, Energy Information Administration, http://www.eia.gov/state/seds/seds-data-complete.cfm?sid=MO#Consumption.

For GSP: GDP and Personal Income, Regional Data, Bureau of Economic Analysis, http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=70&step=1#reqid=70&step=1&isuri=1.