Quick Overview of US Energy Usage



The overall scale of our energy usage is much larger than the common person knows or even understands. This is one of the reasons why its so difficult to move away from fossil fuels as their very high energy content has allowed the US to build a hugely wasteful energy economy and relatively modest cost. But those days are over but because the scale is so large, replacing fossil fuels is really a multi decadel effort. Yes we can, well maybe, for it will take 30-50 years and we really haven't started yet.

This situation is clearly summarized in the graphic below were for the last 50 years or so the US per capita energy consumption is at least twice as high as Europe or Russias and roughly 6 times higher than the world. Note however, the rate at which China is growing in this regard. We will revisit this issue later. Also note that this graph only goes to 2010 but the situation over the last 6 years has essentially remained the same.

An important note about Energy. Energy consists of 3 main uses:

  • electricity generation (usually via fossil fuel heating of water to make steam)
  • transportation (using fossil fuels for transport)
  • heating (burning natural gas to give off heat)




An important realization of the electricity use by Sector for the US is that only the residential and commercial sectors are growing. Industrialization has been flat, mostly because the US is now outsourcing most of its manufacturing infrastructure (i.e. the US is closing facilities and this hurts the economy even more).



And although some new renewable energy facilities have been built (see Module 5) the US is clearly dominated by fossil fuels and has been for the last 60 years. Roughly speaking 85-90% of our energy requirements are met by fossil fuels. Note also the pitiful increase in renewables under this projection out to 2035.




In terms of sources of CO2 emission, electricity generation by Coal and driving with gasoline dominate the US emissions portfolio which is relatively unchanged between 2010 (Left) and 2016 (right). Main small difference is electricty accounts for a smaller percentage due to less reliance on coal in 2016 than 2010.



In terms of US crude oil production this peaked at about 10 MBD (millions of barrels per day) around 1971 and this has since been called the Hubbert Peak (discussed later ON). In 1976 we started drilling for crude oil in Alaska and that created another source of domestic crude oil, but that source peaked in 1985 at a level below the lower 48 1971 peak.

Since the resource in Alaska was not as "infinite" as first thought, domesitic production of crude oil steadily declined so that by 2010 we were producing about 1/2 of what was produced in 1971 but using about 20 MBD thus necessitating an increasing reliance on foreign oil imports, despite all government rhetoric to the contrary.

However, starting in around 2011 unconventional sources of crude oil were being harvested in North Texas and in the Bakken formation in North Dakota. Once again, US energy policy is pretending this sources are "infinite" but in reality they are quite finite which will be discussed later. This has lead to various proclamations, such as shown below, but as we will see these proclamations about all time high production in the US are very short lived. The amount of shale oil we have that is accessible is simply not very large relative to our total demand.



Over this time period the demand for oil has roughly doubled and hence our reliance on imports has steadily increased until somewhat recently. The recent decrease is mostly due to increased average fuel efficiency as we are not driving significantly less than we used to.

The current situation has seen a recent uptick in production - this will be short lived.



This reduction is likely temporary as most projections show continue reliance on imported oil at least until the year 2025 (when real shortages might begin).



As can be seen below, one of the essential points in all of this is that US imports essentially doubled over a 20 year time scale. This directly shows the US is not thinking about energy policy and sustainability at all.



Perhaps this is why we can not seem to actually achieve an "energy independent future"

The figure below shows the overall evolution of US electricity generation since 1980 where, primarily though increase use of fossils we have grown our electricity generation infrastructure by 250% in 35 years (that is not what sustainability looks like).



Future growth is expected, of course, and that demand is expected to be met in three ways:
  • Approximately doubling the use of natural gas (NG) from its current use.
  • Doubling renewables (mostly wind) from their current values
  • Increasing the use of coal by about 20% of its current use.
Nowhere does conservation or reduced use of electricity enter!

Note that an update to the coal vs Natural Gas (NG) situation is shown below where it can be seen that recently, NG has recently taken over Coal in terms of its contribution to the total US Electricity Profile.



But of course, this is just subsitituing one form of Fossil Fuels for another, slightly cleaner form. What we should be doing is wholesale subsitition of renewable energy for fossil fuels. While we will discuss this later, for now we simply show the graphical form of wind energy buildout that was gaining strong momentum until 2012.



Below is another projection of future electricity use where it again can be seen that the growth of renewable sources is fairly small and overall growth is about 25% between 2012 and 2035. Again, no idea that electricity conservation should be part of our national future.




And finally, the figure below shows a snapshot of recent history where one can clearly see an overall pattern of business as usual (BAU). Still there are some features to note:
  • Coal burning has gone down by about 15% over the last 10 years but this is not likely to continue into the future at the same rate.
  • NG is making up for the slow decline in coal and this will continue to accelerate but see this opinion piece
  • Renewables are growing but way too slowly to replace fossil fuels