While the recently released IPCC report has garnered little attention in the mainstream media, another report produced last month received even less — none whatsoever to my knowledge. Since I am using data it contains in a forthcoming post on sustainability and free markets, I thought I should prepare the ground a little bit.
The report is called AEO2007, Annual Energy Outlook 2007 with Projections to 2030, and is produced annually by US Department of Energy (see bottom of this post for details and link). The chart on above (discussed below) is a reflection of some of the data it contains. What’s rather shocking in light of the IPCC summary report is some of the other data in AEO2007 — at least at first glance. When you read it carefully, you find the authors had a narrowly focused task and merely assembled the data according.
The question on my mind: How realistic is it to assume that consumption can continue to grow? Every politician and CEO sells growth as if it is always and unquestionably good. Yet land, water, fossil fuels and even sunshine are finite, so how do we reconcile this attitude toward growth when at some point we come up against physical limits?
(All the cool charts are below the fold.)
One way to address the issue is to look at something that correlates almost perfectly (and not at all mysteriously) with total consumption: energy use. That’s what drew me to the AEO2007 report where I discovered that its “reference case” projection for the year 2030 includes these assumptions:
- oil prices will not change (actually oil and natural gas prices will decline until 2015 then start to rise gently to a point below today’s prices)
- oil imports will increase by 28% over 2005 levels
- energy prices will decrease (even though the report says demand of oil and gas will increase in the rest of the world and we will continue to import 30% of our total energy needs)
- our energy profile will not be significantly different in 2030 — pretty much the same mix of oil, coal, nuclear, and renewables but strangely more coal and less nuclear as a percentage of the total
- carbon emissions will continue to grow significantly
- GDP will grow steadily at 2.9% annually
Before digging into the report, some terminology is needed. One common unit of measure used when talking about energy produced and consumed at a national scale is the quad, one quadrillion BTU. After a quick review of those three terms — quadrillion, BTU, and quad — we’ll take a look at how the authors of AEO2007 see the USA in 2030.
quadrillion
A quadrillion is 1,000,000,000,000,000 (15 zeros after the “1″). Some context:
- 1,000 — one thousand (3 zeros)
- 1,000,000 — one million (6 zeros)
- 1,000,000,000 — one billion (9 zeros)
- 1,000,000,000,000 — one trillion (12 zeros)
- 1,000,000,000,000,000 — one quadrillion (15 zeros)
- 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 — one quintillion (18 zeros)
It’s a really big number.
BTU: British Thermal Unit
What you probably don’t need to know: A BTU is defined as the amount of energy required to heat one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit, just over 1000 joules in SI units. Think of it this way:
- Ubiquitous item: Your disposable Bic lighter will produce about 3,000 BTUs of heat.
- Gas/Petrol: The energy in 10 gallons of gasoline is about 1.25 million BTUs. (90 pounds of coal contains about the same amount of energy.) If you drive 10 miles to work in a car that gets 20 miles to the gallon in mixed city/highway driving — a typical commute — you are using 125,000 BTUs each day (round trip). Do this 5 days/week for two weeks and you’ve used 1.25 million BTUs. [updated thanks to Pete]
- Electric power equivalence: A 75 watt light bulb consumes 256 Btu per hour.
- Straight from the definition: If you have a perfect (and unrealistic) cooking arrangement — no heat losses whatsoever — only 144 BTUs are needed to bring two cups of water (about a pound) from room temperature to the boiling point. The realistic amount is probably many multiples of that after accounting for less than perfect heat transfer and other losses.
- Steam: It takes additional energy to convert water at the boiling point into steam (latent heat of vaporization). 1 BTU raises a pound of water (two cups) 1 degree Fahrenheit — 144 to go from room temperature to the boiling point — but 970 more are needed to vaporize that pound. Almost all of our electricity production involves steam technology.
The USA is really the last bastion of the BTU — even the Brits who gave us the term have become comfortable with SI units. However, on a per capita basis the USA is also the largest user of energy in the world — by far. We use about 22% of all the energy consumed in the world each year. So having a sense of what a BTU means is important in talking about energy with Americans.
Because a single BTU is a rather small amount of energy at the everyday scale of common things, “developed” countries with tens or hundreds of millions of people need quadrillions of them to live in the style to which they are accustomed.
the quad
A quad is one quadrillion BTU. Each of the following is one quad:
- 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas
- 293 billion kilowatt-hours
- 42 billion TOE, ton of oil equivalent
- 29 billion TCE, ton of coal equivalent
- 8 billion gallons of gasoline
- 172 million barrels of oil
The quad is a convenience. We can use small numbers with this large unit of energy instead of huge numbers with small units. The world energy consumption in 2004 was 446 quads according to the US Department of Energy (see table 1.8).
Currently the USA consumes just over 100 quads of energy per year — about two quads every week — and of course that increasing in a country where growth is always good and growth if fueled by energy.
baseline year 2005
AEO2007 contains a large amount of detailed data about what fuels are used to generate our 100 quads per year, how we use them, and what the cost is in terms of dollars and carbon emissions. For now, I’ll just show some of the highlights and save the rest for another post (or I’ll never get this done).
consumption by fuel
- liquid fuels: petroleum products like gasoline (petrol), diesel, and jet fuel account for 73% of this category (30 quads). 43% is gasoline (17 quads).
- renewables: about half is hydroelectric power (2.8 quads); the rest is a mix of geothermal, wood and wood waste, municipal solid waste, other biomass, wind, photovoltaic and solar thermal sources. A report footnote says it also includes ethanol components.
- net imports: 30 quads of the 100 we use are imported as oil and natural gas. The gray bars within the colored ones represent the portion coming from imports.
consumption by sector
Notes:
- residential: this is energy used for heating, cooling, lights, appliances, etc. About half (10 quads) is “electricity related losses.” That is, almost half of each quad of energy used to produce electricity is lost during production and distribution, the bulk of it in waste heat inherent in the processes used — just like not all the heat from your stove-top gets transferred to the tea kettle. The other half is evenly split between natural gas and electricity use.
- commercial: energy used in commercial buildings is very similar to the residential mix.
- industrial: because electricity is a smaller part of the fuel mix in this sector, electricity related losses are only 23% (7.6 quads) of the total. Other portions are 30% petroleum fuels, 24% natural gas, 11% electricity, 6% coal, 5% biofuels and other renewables.
The total of all electricity related losses for 2005 was 27.2 quads or 27% of all the energy consumed. (Boiler and steam turbine technology is about as mature as it every will be. Don’t look for that 27% to be reduced much in the future. The data here does account for co-generation.)
2030 projection
The numbers used here are from the AEO2007 reference case projection. The report address two variations of the reference case, one examining variation in energy prices and one for variation in technology used (more or less efficient) economic growth.
consumption by fuel
This chart, same one used at the top of this post, shows both the 2005 actual data and the 2030 projected values. The most obvious take away is that everything grows. Total energy consumption goes up by 31%.
Notes:
- coal: 49% increase. If you’ve been reading the newspapers and listening to our politicians is no surprise. Coal is abundant and currently cheap. In the 25 year interval examined it goes from 23% to 26% of the fuel mix.
- nuclear: 15% increase. It’s portion of the fuel mix actually falls — from 8.1% to 7.2%. This is due to the relatively large number of existing plants coming to the end of their planned life in the next 25 years and the time and cost required to build new ones.
- renewables: 37% increase. Since this is the smallest proportion of the fuel mix in 2005 at 5.6%, even with a big increase renewables are just 5.9% of the 2030 total.
- net imports: 28% increase. No significant change in proportion of total. The reference case projects the USA will remain as relatively dependent on imports in the future as it is today.
consumption by sector
Again both the 2005 actual data and the 2030 projected values for the reference case are shown.
- transportation: with 40% growth, this has now surpassed the industrial sector as the largest.
- industrial: 19% growth is the smallest of the four sectors. Some of this must be efficiency gains but I suspect most has to do with projecting the current trend toward a more service-based economy.
changes 2005 to 2030
AEO2007 is a 229 page report. In spite of excellent use of graphs and charts and a clear writing style, much of the interesting information has to be teased out. Here are some of the projected changes I found interesting. Can you spot anything among those listed below that doesn’t make sense in light of the information presented above and how you view the future?
The bottom five items reflect changes in absolute size. The top four are per capita figures. All cost data are based on constant dollars to account for inflation.
- The absolute size of population, carbon emissions, energy consumption, and energy expenditures all increase by about a third, the GDP by two thirds. (The historical relationship between GDP and energy consumption would be a good topic for a post.)
- Because the percentage change in the GDP is greater than that in population there is a nice increase in GDP per capita.
- Because relative increases in population, carbon emissions, energy consumption and energy expenditures are similar, the percentage increases for carbon emissions, energy consumption and energy expenditures on a per capita basis are not nearly as dramatic as the GDP’s.
- Still, per capita carbon emissions increase, and total carbon emissions increase by 34%.
I saw George W. Bush on the news this past week saying that in the last few years carbon emissions had fallen in relationship to the GDP and that was what his administration was committed to. He smiled in satisfaction at this accomplishment. I remember sitting up and wondering how many people would take away the message that we are currently reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Notice the item in the chart above. The 2030 projection, in the official reference case for the US government, shows a 19% decrease in carbon emissions per dollar of GDP which, in itself, is not spin. The spin comes from not mentioning the rest: carbon emissions increase a lot and this sense of decrease is only due to GDP increasing relatively faster than carbon emissions. So, the USA projects an increase of 34% in carbon emissions in 25 years while the UK, Germany, and the rest of the developed world are trying to reduce emissions by as much as 20% in a shorter period of time. This is exactly the Tragedy of the Commons that Hardin wrote about in 1968. The USA gets the benefit, the whole world shares the cost.
semifinal thoughts
My introduction to Annual Energy Outlook 2007 with Projections to 2030 report has already become to long, so I’ll stop here for now and post about it again after I’ve had more time for study.
about the AEO2007 report
AEO2007, the Annual Energy Outlook 2007 with Projections to 2030 report is
- prepared by the Energy Information Administration, Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting, U.S. Department of Energy,
- published in accordance with Section 205c of the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 (Public Law 95-91), which requires the EIA Administrator to prepare annual reports on trends and projections for energy use and supply, and
- based on results from Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS). NEMS is also used in analytical studies for the U.S. Congress, the White House, and other offices within the Department of Energy. The AEO projections are also used by analysts and planners in other government agencies and outside organizations.
The projections in the Annual Energy Outlook 2007 are not statements of what will happen but of what might happen, given the assumptions and methodologies used. The projections are business-as-usual trend estimates, given known technology and technological and demographic trends. AEO2007 generally assumes that current laws and regulations are maintained throughout the projections.
In light of recent Trinifarian discussions it’s important to underline this. The report does not offer predictions; it makes projections based on explicit assumptions and methodologies.
The report is available in one 7MB PDF file here. This link provides access to individual chapters as PDF and individual data sets as Excel files (easily read by OpenOffice Calc).
helpful references
Energy Units on the American Physical Society site for conversion factors and discussion of the nuances of using them for different types of fuel with special considerations for talking about electricity production, distribution, and consumption.
about the charts
I should note that all the charts above are based on AEO2007 data but are my work. See the report for its own fine visual aids.
[update: see also part two of this series]
Various aspects of economic growth don’t entail more use of physical resources. Although obviously a command over nature is historically one measure of what makes people feel wealthy.
Whilst it is not the norm I think we should remain open to the hypothetical possiblity of an economy that is growing whilst at the same time our dependence on additional physical inputs declines. We might even imaging a growing economy in which the absolute requirement for physical inputs is in decline. Whilst I don’t think these hypotheticals apply to the totality of our current economies they certainly apply to sections of our economies.
US Climate Action Report is released.
http://www.env-econ.net/2007/03/us_climate_acti.html
“The Bush administration estimates that emissions by the United States of gases that contribute to global warming will grow nearly as fast through the next decade as they did the previous decade, according to a long-delayed report being completed for the United Nations.”
Various aspects of economic growth don’t entail more use of physical resources.
It’s probably not surprising, given the general themes on Trinifar, that I’m very interested in this idea.
Much of engineeering is about doing more with less — the whole productivity/efficiency thing — and the activity of engineering itself uses relatively little in the way of resources. (I can remember the paper and slide rule days.) Software development, for example, is low resource by definition — although in my case it involved a lot of air travel.
Similarly with the arts and entertainment. A symphony is low resource, even a rock band, but a public performance means thousands of people (in the rock band case) getting in their cars and driving to the venue.
In the USA we’ve designed, or rather stumbled into, an economy dependent on high energy use in which the industrial sector only accounts for 33% of consumption. Another 28% is used just to move things and people around (transportation sector) and the remaining 39% mainly heats and cools our buildings and keeps the lights on (residential and commercial sectors). 85% of all that energy comes from fossil fuels.
As Magne notes and the AEO2007 report projects there’s no reason to believe this will change. That’s not quite right: the total will increase and the portion from fossil fuels will increase as well (from 85 to 87% if the reference case projection comes to pass).
I have a thought experiment running as a background task: what would a vibrant economy look like in a world in which the population wasn’t growing and fossil fuels were not used? In other words, is it necessary to assume such a world would be a rather sad, unattractive place to live? I don’t think so, but I haven’t done the work to motivate that conclusion with any confidence. However, I’m am convinced that a sustainable, healthy world economy would entail a smaller population than we now have if we are to maintain anything like the standard of living many have come to enjoy.
I don’t think such a world need be sad or unattractive at all, although I’m thinking quite minimal fossil fuel use rather than an absoluted of zero. But I certainly don’t think that we can arrive at this happy version of the future without ongoing economic growth. And we need energy now to invest in the process of building the future.
My article on Techno Optimism was essentially trying to guess at some of the detail of what such a future might look like. I have no difficulty envisaging a future of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that only occasionally need petrol. Of electricity production based on nuclear or solar thermal with supplements from wind, solar and hydro. I expect that airplanes and ships will still use fossil fuels for a long, long time to come but I can live with that.
However to produce plug-in electric vehicles and other such innovations we will need to burn coal in the interum. Slow down the economy and you slow down the pace of innovation.
Slow down the economy and you slow down the pace of innovation.
Or, if you pass legislation that requires a steep decline in fossil fuel use (or increasing taxes on carbon emissions), perhaps you stimulate that area of the economy to innovate and come up with effective solutions. I do agree you cannot turn off fossil fuels like shutting off a water tap. However, as long as the market does not recognize the cost of fossil fuel use, nothing will change.
[...] indicator, we’d need five earths to support ourselves. Nevertheless, as detailed in a post on Trinifar, the US Department of Energy projects a continued rise in energy consumption. (Given past trends, [...]
Trinifar,
I don’t know about the USA but in Australia we already have significant taxes on petrol. Certainly a lot more than is necessary to pay for our roads. In Europe fuel taxes are often even higher. This already provides an incentive for the development of alternatives. In the electricity generation sector I’d be happy enough with a modest tax on coal so long as there was a corresponding reduction in personal income tax (or payroll tax).
However my instinct is that the proponents of doom would never be happy with that. They would want to see coal power stations closed down. They would jack up taxes until it happened. Saying yes to them is irresponsible. This is one area where I think conservatism (an aversion to change) is useful.
Regards,
Terje.
P.S. In much of Australia most coal fired power stations are government owned. In NSW where I live there was a massive overbuild of such capacity in the 1970s (nation building). I’m not entirely sure what a coal tax would mean for those power stations.
Also given the lack of a functional water market in Australia many of the coal fired power stations consume water (in cooling stacks) whilst most likely paying less than the equivalent market price for water.
The government also gives significant funding to coal R&D as part of the traditional view that governments should help key industries develop.
For comparing gas/petrol prices between countries, this Shell in Australia chart is pretty interesting. Look to the bottom to find the USA and Oz. (And, Magne, if you are with us, look at the top to find Norway! Way to go.)
In the USA there is a federal tax of about 18 cents per gallon and each state and some local regions then adds their own. Unsurprisingly California has the most expensive gas (from taxes and a requirement for a cleaner burning blend to reduce smog). This map shows how prices vary by county in the US, and this one how taxes vary at the state level.
There are lots of calls for higher gas taxes here and of course lots of pushback. These days I don’t see any political possibility of increasing taxes on anything. The best we can expect is for some of the tax decreases on the rich to not be renewed when they sunset.
The Shell Chart is a very clear.
Given that the USA and Australia have a lot of large distances I can understand why we tax petrol at a lower rate than some European nations.
When I worked in Silicon Valley a main topic of casual converstation was commute time. The morning crunch began around 5:30am. Traffic was the main reason I left. I had no desire to spend a good portion of my lifetime in a car.
Thankfully hybrid gas/electic are selling like hotcakes now and the massive SUV’s that clog roads and parking lots are beginning to die off. Still, very little momentum for public transportation. American attitude: “That’s what poor people do.” We may well roast to death in a hot world before we give up our cars or invest in a renewable way to fuel them.
Trinifar – you will be pleased to know that I catch a train to and from work each day.
The Eestor technology that I mentioned in my ALS article has huge potenitial implications for the future of hybrid electric vehicles. It does seem ironic that huge fuel taxes in Europe have not translated into more popularity for hybrid electric vehicles. Perhaps they are more popular in the USA because Americans feel prospereous enough to pay the higher purchase price.
If Eestor can pull it off it will really be an amazing thing. I’ll remain skeptical until we see a working prototype and production the results in a price competive product. I’ve seen first hand how venture capitalist can be into investing millions foolishly; I’ve also seen how wise they can be.
On Europe & hybrids: Europe has a vast and for the most part well-run and effective public transportation system. When I first travelled there I was stunned at how small their cars were. So the hybrids are not as competive as they are here in the States. Imagine. though, sticking a hybrid engine or Eestors solution in one of those little cars.
Oh, and good for you on the train commute. Well done.
I’m skeptical and optimistic at the same time. I do hope they pull it off because it will change so many things for the better.
Their investor is famous for picking technology winners so that bodes well for them. I’m certainly hopeful but too aware of there being no silver bullets. Since neither the investor nor the company’s principals are talking, I’m guessing they are still working on fundamental problems and maybe don’t even have their patent applications in shape yet.
If and when they have a viable product it will be a boon to electric-powered travel as well as other things, but we still have to find a way to produce large quantities of electricity in a sustainable way in order to support our current standard of living.
They are certainly being low key and very quite. The last time they spoke they said they were in the process of building a commercial factory. They were quite clear that it was not a factory for prototypes but actual commercial product and they said they intended shipping in 2007. They seem to be fully confident in their technology and they were satisfied with all their testing.
Of course I understand that the whole thing sounds too good to be true and skepticism seems healthy.
[...] on the blog, I’m thinking about writing another about how I do highly accurate charts like the ones in this post. If you have questions and/or suggestions, leave a [...]
[...] [Part one of this series can be found here.] [...]
[...] compare what Dickinson has to say with the Annual Energy Outlook 2007 with Projections to 2030 report, the official statement of the United States government which is prepared every year by the [...]
[...] 2030. It is the official energy report of the US government. I wrote a two part series about it (part one and part [...]
[...] quads, that is, 1 quad = 25.2 [...]
how is 10 miles a day @ 20 miles / gal 1.25 million btu’s?
i get 1 gallon of gas
did we misplace a decimal?
Thanks for catching that, Pete. Corrected above.