East Med. Energy

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The following three charts allow us, as individuals, to make a comparison with how we are doing for annual energy consumption, compared with our nearest neighbours.

The first one shows that we consume slightly less electricity than Greece and Israel but two to four times as much Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey. To situate where we are with respect to Western Europe, the average consumption there is about 8,700 kWh or about 83% higher than ours. However, we should not cry our joy too loudly, because W. Europe is more highly industrialised than we are, there is more electric rail and other public transport and the climate requires more consumption for heating (for example, the Swedish consumption is a whopping 15,665 kWh!)

The second chart shows the total energy consumption, also in kWh. The difference in the shape of each segment from the first chart reflects the energy consumed for road transport, generating electricity, heating houses and swimming pools, the effect of renewable energy etc. Here we come off badly, as having the largest slice, probably because of no significant renewable energy generation, inefficient oil-fired power generation, large and inefficient road vehicles, no co-ordinated public transport etc. In fact, we are not far behind some W. European countries, such as Germany (50,604 kWh), despite the fact that Germany is very highly industrialised. We have no room here to rest on our laurels.

The third chart relates to our carbon dioxide emissions. Theoretically we might think that this should be similar to the previous one. In reality, it is similar but not the same. Israel, in particular, take a larger slice of the pie, but so does Cyprus. In fact, this is a crowning shame on our island, when we compare it to various W. European countries, such as France (6.80 t), Germany (10.21 t), Sweden (6.27 t), Switzerland (6.00 t) and the UK (9.53 t). Yet all these countries are highly industrialised. OK, some of them have high levels of carbon-free power generation (nuclear, renewable and hydroelectric) but, as pointed out, they average 83 per cent more electricity consumption, on an average because of their industry and public transport - and they have to heat their houses much more than we do.

So, where do we stand? Each one of us in Cyprus is causing more greenhouse gas emissions than any person in the Eastern Mediterranean, an Israeli excepted, and many of our European colleagues create less than we do, as well. This is because our energy use is inefficient, combined with our means of transport, electricity generation and so on. Firstly, we must conserve electricity by using high-efficiency lighting and appliances and we must forego unnecessarily large vehicles, such as the 3.5 l pickup or SUV used to go shopping.

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