Sustainable Energy Systems and the Threshold Hypothesis

The possibility for communities to live with sustainable level of household energy consumption without sacrificing the quality of life needs to be explored and demonstrated. Most global data of electricity consumption shows... [ view full abstract ]

The possibility for communities to live with sustainable level of household energy consumption without sacrificing the quality of life needs to be explored and demonstrated. Most global data of electricity consumption shows that higher levels of consumption relate to an improved quality of life up to a point in which the the upward trends stops and the curve seems to saturate. Previous work on the energy threshold hypothesis presented a the concept that when when energy consumption increases beyond certain threshold, the level of wellbeing does not only saturates but it declines. Those results using life satisfaction and life expectancy data from 151 countries called for further examination of the issue. This work provides a new outlook at the energy threshold using five elements of wellbeing identified by the Gallup-Healthways Report on the State of Global Wellbeing 2014. In the report the countries are ranked in each one of the five elements by the percentage of the population that is thriving in that area. The overall ranking is determined by the percentage of the population that is thriving in at least three of the five domains. The exploration of the data supports the energy threshold hypothesis better than any earlier evidence that has been available. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is not a good measure of people’s quality of life because it increases when violence, divorces and disasters increase. While some may suggest that subjective wellbeing data are not good indicators of real wellbeing, alternatives such as the Human Development Index are too dependent on GDP. Furthermore, the global data used in this work included subjective financial indicators that correlate well with average per capita Gross National Income (GNI), which suggests that the perspective of those questioned were influenced by objective facts. The findings provides strong evidence that the countries with a higher percentage of the population thriving are not the ones that consume the most electric energy, neither the ones with the highest GNI. For example, there are 48 countries with higher GNI and 69 with a higher per capita electricity consumption than Panama, the country that ranked number one in the study with 53% of their population thriving in at least 3 areas. Puerto Rico ranked first in the area of social wellbeing with 63% of their population thriving in social wellbeing, although 31 countries had higher GNI and 28 had higher per capita electricity consumption. Panama is ranked first with 60.5% and 52.25% of their population thriving in purpose and physical wellbeing respectively. In the financial wellbeing category Norway is ranked first with 68.9% of their population thriving in financial autonomy while it is the country with greatest per capita electricity consumption and also one of the top three in GNI. The global data provides the rationale to further explore these complex relationships at a smaller scale, for example looking at consumption patterns in small communities of less than 1000 houses, supplied by microgrids, and/or with shared community solar arrangements.