Facts, Choices, and Challenges
Energy ABCs
Many Americans are unaware of our society’s energy needs, the sources of our fuel and power, or the profound impact that supply shortages would have on their jobs, budgets, and way of life. A lack of understanding has left the country with energy and environmental policies that are based on complacency, contradiction, emotion, and politics. Let’s take a look at some basic facts and realities.
Demand is growing and will continue to grow
- In 2005, Americans consumed 100.2 quadrillion Btu’s of energy. Fifty years ago, our nation used less than half as much.
- By 2030, even with advances in efficiency, America’s growing population and technology-intensive economy will require up to one-third more energy an estimated 131.2 quadrillion Btu’s.
The largest share of our energy consumption is used to generate power, not run our cars.
- Some 40% of our energy is used by utilities and their plants to produce electricity to power everything we do in a modern society. The high-tech computer age has significantly increased the demand for electricity. Fifty-three percent of electric power comes from coal, 20% from nuclear, 15% from natural gas, 9% from renewable resources (including hydroelectric power), and 3% from petroleum.
- Another 28% of our energy is used for transportation, 98% of which is supplied by petroleum.
- Industry consumes another 21% of our energy to build and make things, thus creating and supporting American jobs. Industry gets its energy from petroleum (46%) and natural gas (38%), as well as coal (10%) and renewables (7%).
- The remaining 11% is used for residential and commercial power that is not produced by utilities. Common uses of this energy include space heating, water heating, air conditioning, lighting, refrigeration, independent power generators, and the running of a wide variety of other appliances and equipment. Seventy-three percent of this power is supplied by natural gas, 21% from oil, 6% from renewables, and 1% from coal.
Looking just at sources of energy, rather than uses, our single largest energy source is oil.
- Oil supplies 40%, natural gas 23%, coal 23%, nuclear 8% and renewables (including ethanol) 6.1% of our total energy consumption.
- Eighty-six percent of our energy supply comes from fossil fuels. These are the fuels that currently emit the greenhouse gases believed to contribute to global warming.
- The U.S. Energy Information Administration has forecast that the United States will still rely on oil, gas, and coal for more than 85% of its total energy for decades to come — even with increased energy efficiency and the development of alternative sources of power.
Most of our total energy supply is produced at home, not abroad, but we rely heavily on foreign oil…
- Only about a third of our total energy supply comes from other countries. We produce massive amounts of coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power in our own country — and the potential exists to produce much more.
- Sixty percent of our oil is imported. Canada and Mexico are our top oil suppliers, accounting for 30% of imports, while the Middle East accounts for 17%.
To achieve energy security, infrastructure is as important as supply…
- Wherever our energy may come from, it must be moved seamlessly and efficiently across a vast and intricate fuel, power, and transportation infrastructure and logistics system.
- Oil is shipped through 200,000 miles of pipeline. Each year, 3,500 tankers deliver 4.2 billion barrels of oil to the United States.
- We maintain a gasoline refining capacity of 17 million barrels per day. The finished product is moved to our communities over the road in 18 million tank-truck shipments per year.
- The nation has 1,300 natural gas drilling rigs and 300,000 miles of natural gas pipeline. There are 56,000 rail tank-cars and 2,000,000 tank-truck shipments of liquefied petroleum gas annually.
- We have 10,000 power plants across the country, including 66 nuclear plants and 104 reactors. We have 200,000 miles of interconnected electricity transmission lines and countless transformer substations.
- Every year, more than 7 million train carloads carry 784 million tons of coal to coal-fired power plants and American industry.
- Any serious strategy for energy security must not only include the development of more supply but also address how we will move energy to consumers and businesses in a growing economy.
Energy bills may be high, but some historical and global perspective is revealing…
- Contrary to popular belief, the typical family is not paying more than ever before for energy.
- Energy consumption represented approximately 7% of the household budget between 1990 and 2004, a decrease from 11% in the early years of the 1980s. Expenditures rose to approximately 8.5% in 2005.
- American motorists are comparably better off when it comes to the price of gas. For example, they were paying an average of $2.86 a gallon in the third quarter of 2006, whereas drivers in Britain paid about $6.50 per gallon.
- Because energy commodities are produced, bought, and sold in a global marketplace, America’s fuel supply—even domestically produced energy—is heavily influenced by worldwide market conditions. Our policymakers and diplomats must therefore work for a stable, efficient, secure, and open global energy market.
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