www.enreport.com

Pretty interesting piece to read:

China's economy grew at an annualized 6.1 percent rate in the first quarter, and
7.9 percent in the second. Yet electricity usage, a key indicator in industrial
growth and a harder metric to manipulate, declined 2.2 percent in the first six
months of the year.

Ref:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/09/03/how_china_cooks_its_books?page=0,1

According the Wall Street Journal,

• 4.4% electricity demand drop in the largest US power market (consisting of13 states east of Mississippi)
• Average spot price in the same region drops by 40%. ($61.72/ MWh from $129.48/Mwh)

"Generally, the declines in demand and prices are the most precipitous and most sustained seen in the United States since the 1950s."

Ref:

IEEE Spectrum, 12 August 2009

• 7% of the passengers are using rail systems


• Rail mass transport system is 55 km and consumes 70 million kWh
  
• By 2012, Istanbul rail system will reach 230 km, consuming 450 million kWh

London Metro is consuming 1.17 TWh (Billion kWh) per annum

References:

Some very useful info from Dr. Michael Dittmar @ The Oil Drum:

• Commercial nuclear reactors are operated in 31 out of the 200 countries on our planet. In 2009, 436 nuclear power plants, with a net installed capacity of 370.2 GW electric power, are in operation. These reactors provide about 14% of the electric energy produced world-wide
• 2008 was the first year since at least 40 years, when not even one new reactor was connected to the electric grid.
• [...] 2005, 2007, and 2008 when, 2626 TWhe, 2608 TWhe, and 2601 TWhe were generated
• 48 reactors are under construction today
• reactors would require roughly 500 tons of natural uranium per GWe for the first load and 170 tons/year during the following years
• the yearly uranium demand will increase from 65,000 tons in 2008 to about 90,000 tons by 2015.

Also:

assume that each nuclear weapon contains on average just the critical mass or at
least 50 kg of U235. Using this assumption, we find that the U235 of one nuclear
bomb corresponds to 7 tons of natural uranium equivalent on average, and that
the uranium from about 25 such bombs is sufficient to operate a 1 GWe reactor for one year

World Nuclear Power Reactors & Uranium Requirements

One of the implications of the recession is the big drops in electricity demands. In the developing countries, we see electricity demand drops followed by drops at industrial activity statistics. Here we see a basic example of economic activity(export rate is an indicator of Chinese economy) and electricity demand.

This news (China hit by massive drop in exports) from Financial Times says :
"Chinese exports plunged 25.7 per cent in February compared with a year ago, much higher than analysts had expected, as the global economic crisis began to take its full toll on the country’s export sector."

You should also check the following line:
"China’s exports have decreased for four months in a row, but until February the rate of decline had been much slower than seen in other Asian countries with large export sectors. .... The trade surplus, which has been at record levels for the last four months, also shrank sharply from $39.1bn to $4.84bn."

This reminded me the news from last month about a drop in Chinese electricity demand. Last month(Jan 2008), we have seen a 13% drop in Chinese electricity demand:

"Major power producers generated only 250.3 million megawatt hours of electricity last month, falling 13 percent from a year earlier, the China Daily reported. This is the fourth consecutive month that electricity generation in the country declined".
Source: China Post

Also read this one from Xinhua:

"However, the decline was smaller than in November and December, when power use fell 8.6 percent and 8.93 percent, respectively. According to CEC, the slowing pace of decline was a sign of economic recovery, as industrial use accounts for about 75 percent of total consumption. "

If you check Chinese state grid web site (http://www.sgcc.com.cn/) , you will see that the graphs (English / Statistics) are not updated for a long time

Turkish electricity consumptions by sectors can be reached from TEDAS website. The latest year is 2007

You can also reach the Excel file that I prepared from this link.

The important thing in this graph is the robust growth in services and industry sectors. Of course, when looking into 2009, we will miss that year dearly. In services sector, especially hotels and tourism may be a bing contributor to this demand. Household consumptions however is more balanced and with a slower than economic growth rate.

The happy days are over and we cannot have a good prediction for the end of this recession. Energy demand is highly correlated with economic growth. For developed countries, energy demand growth is less than the economic growth, on the other hand for developing nations it may be more than the economic growth.
So to forecast energy demand, oil prices and new investment cycle, economic forecasts are very important.
Recently econbrowser.com website has a very interesting post to read. It may need some econometric background but the main point is quite clear. Will the rebound from the recession start with a big jump or just average?
Answers vary, and if you read the post and relevant links, there are two explainations:
1. It will be higher than normal : (Trend stationary)
"suppose that the economy is down because people are postponing the purchases of cars and other goods out of fear. That would be a trend-stationary story, because it suggests a nice rebound when people get over their fear."
2 . It will be just around average: (Unit root)
"Suppose that the economy is down because we accumulated the wrong types of physical capital (houses) and human capital (skills in mortgage securitization). That is a unit-root type problem. Yes, the economy will start growing again at some point, but that misallocation of physical and human capital is a permanent loss. We are not going to make up for it with some above-normal growth."

The detailed explanations and models worth reading:

From EconBrowser.com

A simple regression of log GDP on a time trend and lagged log GDP, over the 1967q1-08q4 period yields the following:

y_t = 0.424+0.0004time + 0.945y_t-1

Where Adj-R² = 0.9995, SER = 0.008

The AR1 coefficient of 0.945 (se = 0.03) implies a half life of 12.25 quarters, or slightly over 3 years for a deviation from output. Since AR coefficients are biased downward, this is a downwardly biased estimate of the half life.

Brad de Long's Blog

A more technical article about this issue:
Unit root or trend stationary
from Greg Mankiw's Blog