A recent study on the historic development of energy consumption in the Norwegian dwelling stock (Sandberg et al. 2011), based on the building stock model developed in the work of Bergsdal and colleagues (2007), showed that direct energy consumption doubled between 1960 and 1995 and has remained rather constant at about 45 terawatt-hours per year (TWh/yr) since. Using the Norwegian electricity mix, Sandberg and colleagues (2011) found a significant decrease of the sectoral carbon footprint of about 40% mainly due to the phasing out of oil and coal as heating fuels.

Despite an expected population growth of almost 50% between 2000 and 2050, sectoral carbon emissions in that period may drop between 30% and 40% for scenarios where the stock is completely transformed by either reconstruction or renovation to the passive house standard. Due to its lower upstream impact, renovation leads to a lower sectoral carbon footprint than reconstruction.

Among the most famous of these victories was the Bolivian uprising against the Bechtel Corporation, the fifth largest privately-owned company in the US,[28] which had taken over the Cochabamba region’s water supply in 1999. The company raised rates by 300 percent,[29]cutting off service to people who could no longer afford water—and even prevented residents from collecting rainwater unless they obtained a legal permit

Proponents of market environmentalism in the water sector argue that water is an increasingly scarce resource, which must be priced at full economic and environmental cost if it is to be allocated to its highest-value uses, and managed profitably by private companies whose accountability to customers and shareholders is more direct and effective than attenuated political accountability exercised by citizens via political representatives

over 20% the world's population was without access to sufficient supplies of potable water necessary for basic daily needs