How much energy does America really use? Specifically, how much does the average person consume, where does it come from, and what are our expectations for the future? I decided to start my hunt for this information at AmericasPower.com - which is a coal industry website. They’ve been placing a lot of ads on TV in between NBA playoff games, so I figured it’d be as good a place as any to start.
From their facts page:
- Total world consumption of marketed energy is projected to increase by 57 percent from 2004 to 2030.
- Not that I doubt them, this sounds like a legitimate number, but where’s the baseline source? Couldn’t find it.
- Using coal to generate electricity is less than a 1/3 of the cost of other fuels.
- Another situation where I couldn’t find their baseline information. Are we talking about petroleum, natural gas? They use the word “fuels” which makes me believe they are not referring to things like hydroelectric, wind, solar, etc. which are renewable sources - not consumed / burnt fuels.
- Intermittent energy resources like wind and solar are used for meeting peak energy demand because they are not always available. That is different from coal, which is used to provide “baseload” power — the constant, steady supply of electricity we depend upon throughout the day.
- On this I wholeheartedly agree. Baseline power (the least amount of power that we consume at any given moment) needs to be derived from a predictable source. Cloudy skies and low wind should not mean that factories can’t work or lights won’t turn on.
- Since 1970, the use of coal to generate electricity in the U.S. has nearly tripled in response to growing electricity demand.
- This also is around the same time that we started not building nuclear power plants. I’m just sayin’…
Anyways, well those were some of the facts that the coal industry has to offer. Truthfully, without the baseline information about projected energy growth and current energy / electricity conditions, I’m not much better off than I was before visiting the site (not trying to pick on the coal industry, but hard & fast numbers are what I’m after).
Next up? How about the United States Department of Energy website… Ahh! Now we’ve got something to start with: The Energy Information Administration Annual Energy Outlook. The document is a variety of PDF’s that are available to download - and the full report states that it will be ready by the end of May 2008. Inside the overview I found some evidence to support previous details as well as future projections:
(Image from EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2008 PDF Overview)
Notice that hydroelectricity is stagnant - that’s pretty predictable considering what I’ve read and the discussions that I’ve had seem to imply that all the good hydroelectric locations have been used - and that building new dams requires overcoming titanic environmental hurdles. What is interesting is that the amount of liquid fuels is predicted to rise substantially - but many books and articles that I’m reading right now imply that we can’t continue on this path if petroleum prices continue to rise. And yes, coal looks poised to fill in the gaps as well.
Btu’s are handy, but frankly I’m more interested in some wattage numbers (just because it’s something I’m more familiar with - and I’m also wondering how to solve the “electricity” energy issue). So, just as a raw calculation, we’re talking about a current energy demand of approx 40 quadrillion Btu’s of “liquid fuels” + 20 quadrillion Btu’s of Coal + 20 of natural gas + 8 qadrillion Btu’s from nuclear, and let’s say 4 quadrillion Btus from renewables (hydro + non-hydro). So that gives us a grand total current consumption of about 92 quadrillion Btu’s. A quadrillion, for those not paying attention in that class where they described numbers that are so big you’ll probably never need to care, is one billion million. 1,000,000,000,000,000. That’s a lotta Btu’s… 92,000,000,000,000,000 to be exact. Break that in to wattage at 1watt = 3.41 Btu’s, and that’s 26.9 quadrillion watts. 26.9 trillion kilowatts. 26.9 billion megawatts. In America alone.
If we look at the Coal industry’s assumptions, our overall demand will rise by 2030 by 41%, meaning our 26.9 billion megawatt demand will rise to 37.9 billion MW in just 21 years. Notice why I started a blog called AltEnToday.com? There’s a lot to do and very little time to do it in!
Handy links, references, and sources
The Solar Guide: Amps, Volts, Watts, HP, etc.
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