200 Years; The Individual American Consumer and Energy

from communication center the university of texas at austin this is two hundred years in the year nineteen seventy six the american republic celebrates its two hundredth anniversary as a part of the us bicentennial program at the university of texas at austin two hundred years explores the past present and future dynamics of history's longest living democratic society this is rex we're for two hundred years this week we will be talking about the american consumer and energy with us to william h cunningham associate professor of marketing administration at the university of texas at austin george jones associate professor of architectural engineering at university and selling low pre otto director social systems analysis and they center for energy study at ut austin american economy seems to be recovering from the oil embargo two years ago do you think that most americans

believe that the energy crisis is behind us or that a shortage of fuel so still more serious problem in america you so it will rex i think that they did its inherent taxing day that we recently collected here in austin show that over ninety percent of their respondents in austin ingredient mindy problem an even more telling i think is the fact that over eighty percent think that it's down to last twenty years or more ok jerry what it reacted oh i do my reaction is is somewhat mixed in that there's been a cycle when the embargo and people became very much aware of it because of the lines of the gas station we don't have that reminder anymore there was a period in between where i think interest lagged a little bit perhaps are still lagging in some areas of the country but in other areas were utility rates are high as in austin we find that there's a very very real

interest and people's patterns of energy consumption have changed as reflected in the national energy consumption think they'll well i think i agree with most about both of my colleagues that i would like to indicate a study by opinion research corporation nineteen seventy four indicate that only eleven percent of the sample which was a national sample believe that we were really had a severe and ongoing energy problem solving it's interesting to relate that the results were results were being to get which is so indicated indicate that the american public feels a very substantial and you wrote about this target growth i'm energy consumption by individuals an american what does that tell me you know how much we've increased our consumption on a per capita basis of nineteen thirty an individual using energy terms and this is only for purposes of reference to show the girl that consumer hundred and seventy eight million dvds per year by year nineteen

fifty that had risen to the two hundred and twenty six was a great increase but a significant one by nineteen sixty it was two hundred and forty nine by nineteen seventy it was three hundred and thirty million be to use per year and in about nineteen seventy four peak at about three hundred and fifty million and seven five percent a three page consent forms and if i would come down a lot so there's a very big difference between nineteen thirty and say nineteen seventy well it does this idea in the abstract so can we put this in a more concrete illustration in terms of what is a beat eu and so what i think people are you have an illustration of the lowest rate this consumption i'd rather says stay away from a triumph defined it is is just a measure of energy and it's a common measure between all forms you can convert kilowatt hours to beat used to be it used to go on hours and that's that the relative magnitude that i think

is important change in that and for instance a from thirty five thirty to fifty eight even though the change wasn't too terribly great in terms of an anchorman from fifty to seventy three or seventy four it was rather significant and some very important things happen in that period to increase our per capita energy consumption rex i think it's also interesting to point out that the trend on that is anything but clear in fact if you could drop trend that you'd expect that they'd be to use will probably continue to increase a lot of people feel are one reason there's been a drop off and juries have peaked in nineteen seventy four was a substantial increase in oil and gas prices that occurred about that time last recession hit our economy and a quarter industry needed less energy less be to use as a result we've had some thinking about that i think it's interesting to go back and look at what happened in american life during that period they created this to enforcer helped us create the trend

i think and i in my mind van wart is an important marking advantages most wars are we down the development of technology which allowed us to move appliances larger appliances on mass production schedules and into our homes that was the period at an increased suburbanization people were moving out into the suburbs into mass produced toensing great floods there was also the time when social mobility as we how that was on the increase people were working hard gear beer in cans were going out and certainly than ninety show that their incomes were growing up by purchasing material goods in using so we find both the capability and the desire and the ability to purchase all increasing during that period just to follow up on with sally was talking about there was a study done by general foods corporation syndicate is a tremendous amount of energy is required to prepare the kind of goods that we wish to eat today so the example of the housewife that may work have time or part

time she comes home at five o'clock near you know she really doesn't want to start all over start scratch some speak and preparing dinner as a result she was the by prepared foods and they're expensive for her she considers it to be a luxury which she feels she can afford but they cost an awful lot more energy to produce independent films that are for private meeting for him quite beyond any is the tradeoffs involved in energy consumption the one that you're mentioning in particular perhaps is a hindrance of women in the labor force this is certainly both allowed families to purchase more energy using appliances in good and also force and today she's a women can't wash clothes of the young lives and go on indian fighting business world so i think it's important though you raised the question of technology and improving technology this occur i think that both are common cell and baylor are are very pertinent to what

to me what's happened we might look back to nineteen fifteen say how many cars of their second car or families were there in nineteen fifty as compared to day what was the average size of a homeless single family restaurants that's increased somewhat in the last fifteen years how many people had a second refrigerator or a food freezer in their home then is compared to now how many television sets were there then is compared to now so technology has and the availability of more energy use in juarez has said the energy consumption but i think if we look forward from this time and look at this same appliances the same amount in the energy consumption trends in the same appliances we're going to see a very dramatic change because technology is now focusing its efforts on reducing the energy consumption on a per unit basis now more people have the same appliances but each individual clients will use less so i don't think it's realistic to

project future trends on increasing energy on the basis of historical trends and we have to take a different view of it and nineteen terri that go back and look at perhaps some basic motivating force isn't in energy consumption particularly in this country why do we can since him i think i tried to touch and then a moment ago i said where incomes go up when we feel were arising in the world and we want to do ways to show our neighbors and of the people that we are rising and one of a way that we can do that is by material consumption now this need for status and to be able to show that you have status is very important if we try to move away from our traditional reliance on visible symbols of status like automobiles and large homes aren't what are we going to put in its place i mean this is a question which which mass be raised and thought about bio american consumers there is

this need for state is tyranny this need to mark your status if you don't do it in terms of material consumption how are you going to get through one of the next partner in one of the marketing people in the market well i think the most interesting thing is you can look at today is the automobile industry and what we find out of course is that the small cars of the unknown mostly manufactured for us to purchase things like vegas composer bill ritter not selling very well to date now on the other hand the major the big cars things like mcdonald's and build the big the big standard sized cars are not selling very well either it's the intermediate size car that's so important in the road as a coach and an as an intermediate says car it does get substantially better mileage than it's been the standard in a full size car but it gives nothing like the kind of mileage of your small it economy cars get so again it's these are these are maybe you get

it maybe hard it is hard to predict from anyone year in terms of what kind of thing is happening but i think one thing that have to happen if we don't get an increase in the price of our the fuel that we purchase your fine people feel it and there's no reason to be very conservative or towards energy because of the prices still sochi it i think there's a another facet to this to talk about energy conservation earliest rocks when i talk about energy conservation i wanted to make a clear distinction first of all people tend to think of it in terms of curtail the use of energy or not you were not interested in curtailing the use of energy were interested in using energy efficient so it's the end use efficiency that is really good target of a technological development ivory was seinfeld whole way that they're trying to convince the american people as a whole that they're going to have to get by with less would be a very difficult task but if we can if we can

provide them a very relatively constant fire org the biggest seller pointed out a rising standard of living at less energy costs i think that is going to be a very marketable in rapture midsize car as a good example is more efficient air conditioning unit or a more efficient refrigerator i mean it's still a refrigerator and still as big but he uses a third less energy it man ahmed mater but until an american poet may decide if there's one element nice mature but the thing is going back directed the original question on the us and its rule indian market were people wanna be really believe that yes i do or serve these are yes i believe that he created that martin all it's much easier than the way along and success an industry is to an ally as the market to provide the mark with products that people really want to have and that's why corporations and you can listen and got into

trouble because they have not sold products people really want you can in the short run can say we do that but it is in the long run when that the fact that one of the reasons appliances are more efficient at least a person from general electric was explaining to me is not that debt turned murderers can be made more efficiently it had previous murders that that the american consumer requires more convenient they don't want refrigerators that stand out from the longer ones that snyder back in their cabinet they don't want harry insulation and rather have more space on the inside they don't want him to be noisy now if these things had changed their refrigerators warsaw last longer very few jurors that don't have all these noise mufflers and so forth will last longer and that means that the industry won't sell as many again it comes back to you know what he said this is going to the death of general motors and people are clearly buying them buying is all cars you know cars or making money in our constant and owen first american political shift away from homeowners

is going to produce a lot of intermediate says carson secondly general motors is having a very good year this year and again industry shows an amazing capability to just undo what the real consumer wants well is the real story behind general motors the fact that mike a lot more profit off of the larger percentage of the smaller cars and the fact that they refused to switch to smaller cars right at the beginning of an energy crisis and then you look at this in a different direction to go get that think they're two things on the one there's no question john morris makes a lot more money on an intermediate the largest cars no question about that and that's the reason general motors has been as profitable has over the years because it's been it has locked up that data into your meat til our show segment however what people don't realize is that in sochi that it takes to bring a new car on the line from the day you decided you were going to take three to five years so you always an instantaneous we don't produce a little color than the problem was by the tenth time general motors got us little cars we found other people who don't want them and so and then taking a step back from that the easiest solution john

waters had was to take its will they go and get that kind of a sporty image and pretty and bring that out in terms of a little fire nerds of all kinds of products at their head and that again turned up american public and once again that was that was a short term solutions not something where i think it don't want to cause a thick down gasoline prices perhaps of nine bn hands much of a burden on the consumer's electric and gas prices that i liked it and jerry salley very basic things that consumers can do to conserve on like christine gas because that's willing and he's hurting there are a lot of things that an individual can do is home and it will require some effort on their part but it doesn't necessarily adversely affect their lives to inspect an earlier point we can save energy without impacting our lifestyle very simple things to do there were choosing appliances not only on appearance

but the check in the label and they're all going to be labeled now as to what the energy efficiency ratio of this unit this is as opposed to that you're working families below the andes they're very simple numbers i mean an air conditioning unit that has an er and energy efficiency racial of eleven is certainly better than one that has an energy ratio of five and a half and i think i think the average american consumer wants their informed what an energy efficiency racial incidents you've you were high number rather than a low number of them to be quiet quite willing to do that very communal get one thing out as the consumer determine whether it's cost effective in the car asked effectiveness is is something that must be addressed and i think it brings up another area man's public education howard university certainly play a part of the federal agencies are playing a role in that too they're also playing a role in setting standards were all aware of the pressure on the automobile industries as we've chosen as an

example but there is an equal work unequal pressure on the housing industry to improve the thermal performance and that's it many surveys including our show dick congress gets the most blame for not doing anything to a song the energy problem well i think that these solutions takes some time the standards are being developed have been developed that there are there are very many states and local jurisdictions that have adopted them will take a while for the for the impact of this to come through but but i can and i'm sorry to use such a personal example that i can buy a managing the way i operate my home and without the compliant with my wife or children by the way i can i can manage to keep my utility bills a level approximately thirty to thirty five percent follow the dealer level of consumption of the previous occupant of the home and i have no monthly record trumbo

now we can do that i mean when the difficulties in doing it is that we were still afraid of technology on take a simple example you know it's very energy saving to lore the saying on your hot water heater in your home but this can be a frightening experience a hot water here doesn't work to the average share a person like her common everyday piece of machinery sitting you may be afraid at least i was to going to ever with it and any change the temperature sitting on severe these small things switch inhibit as i think from making what are really very minor and very simple changes the fall a lot of people said i think you're also one of the simplest and the thing about it is the most imperative to go take a look at them i'm insulation general and depending on where you live if you don't if you're not adequately insulated you're really innovative products and that's something new you can do something about reasonably inexpensive would get an expert out of necessary

and you find out that it's going to cost effective rather rapidly the government's agencies and then again i'm not don't wanna defend congress or the government agencies particular year because there are some there are some some faults and the sun reticent to take necessary action there too but nonetheless there are a number of good consumer oriented publications coming up from the various government agencies as to what the individual homeowner can do in his own home and some of them are more quality products from the government printing office the acquisition listener available from their check your local public library and you'd be surprised how many times you can find the same publications available through outsource our universe to live our car you're getting their most states have the energy office's which provide consumer information in this time we need to look into this what we can anticipate in the future

you've given us a brief glimpse of her earlier what can we anticipate in saving energy especially in homes are we having changes in the way homes are constructed yes we are there are there are things being changed in that way and it will make a difference we do a fairly extensive study for one particular state that is implementing some of legislation and it appears that you can cut the annual growth rate which has been running now for a wider consumption is example about five point seven percent you can cut that to about four and half percent per year now that's a very significant change but through the implementation off on their construction and higher efficiency and in terms of the appliances and if we make a maximum effort we can probably cut another half a point percentage point three iran until about the area of marketing our companies begin to have they've begun to market energy

saving devices will again i think they have or expert but i think the prom welcomed the fact that the american public wants american public doesn't want it there's no reason to sell so i think that's the kind of thing that when american coalition have to make that decision well i think really in season changes it's difficult to say how drastic they'll be repaid present the moon and to earn more malt o family dwelling units that would be tan house situation our apartment buildings a duplex is and so forth i would anticipate is solar heating and cooling comes online this would be more cost effective than the very large single family dwellings that we now insist on our own it'll also be interesting to see if a trend toward does suburbanization reverses itself because of higher gasoline prices and higher and heating polling firms that always

see any changes in commercial buildings for example us don't notice a lot of glass enclose buildings are they necessarily an efficient it made it depends a great deal on the type of glass common type of heating and air conditioning system and that but building owners are hurting when it comes to two the cost of operating the building things are being done than you can expect that that new buildings will use about fifty percent as much energy as many of the existing and then there are many areas such as this one where things really are going to happen and talking about the industry i was driving with an individual from a large industry not too long ago in the past three years they have managed to cut their energy consumption per pound of product produced by forty percent now they've had a very active energy conservation program but it's important to them with increasing energy costs well this we can save other discussion this morning where

our future is going to be changed whether we like it not because of the fact there is only so much energy but that we can if we can learn how to maximize an end of the use of energy then we will be able to maintain a relatively high standard of living this week we talked about the american consumer an energy in our panelists have been bill cunningham associate professor of marketing administration at the university of texas at austin general jones associate professor of architectural engineering at the university and sally low principal director social systems analysis ut austin at the center for energy studies this as rex we're for two hundred years two hundred years as part of the united states bicentennial program at the university of texas austin is a continuing series of weekly conversations about the past present and future dynamics of history's longest living democratic society two hundred years is produced by kim

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