The US presidential election is in days. The candidates either ignore the climate change emergency or minimize it as a distant future crisis. Why is that the worst possible position?
Because energy drives the U.S. economy, it is a crucial element in the political campaigns of both presidential candidates. However, their stated policies are usually simplified to appeal to voters and ignore the implication of those simplifications. Donald Trump reduces his policies to “Dig, Baby, Dig,” recognizing that fossil fuels are basic to continued economic growth, but greenhouse gas emissions are unimportant.
Kamala Harris now supports fracking in Pennsylvania for political reasons. Both major candidates tout the fact that the United States is “energy independent” and is the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels. Donald Trump does not believe in climate warming; Kamala Harris talks of the Inflation Reduction Act and its technological solutions to global warming. The major media sources report these positions but fail to show the complexities and implications of following these positions.
Below, I present a view of the energy situation in the United States through diagrams and brief accompanying notes. The diagrams and graphics bring to light some of the problems created by positions concerning energy. (The diagrams and notes on energy are from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The fourth diagram was produced by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The sixth diagram was produced by the New York Times.)
I first show, historically, the major sources of energy produced in the United States. Second, I will show how energy has been increasingly consumed in the past. In the third section, I show how energy flows through the major sectors of the U.S. economy. Next, I will show recent projections of the future directions of energy production and consumption. I will show graphs that illustrate the release of CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels. In my conclusions, I discuss the energy predicament within which we find ourselve.
UNITED STATES ENERGY PRODUCTION
The continued upward turn in energy production is striking. U.S. energy production has been greater than U.S. energy consumption since 2019. Only the use of coal has drastically declined. In 2023, total production was about 102.83 quads Btu and consumption was 93.59 quads. Although consumption in the U.S. has decreased, exports have increased. Nevertheless, all energy that is produced is consumed, whether in the U.S. or when exported. As a result, emissions of greenhouse gases have increased. (Some types of energy are imported.)
Fossil fuels accounted for about 84% of total U.S. primary energy production in 2023. The percentage shares and amounts (in quads Btu) of total U.S. primary energy production by major sources in 2023 were:
38% 39.25 quads Natural gas
34% 35.24 quads Petroleum
11% 11.81 quads Coal
8% 8.43 quads Renewable energy
8% 8.10 quads Nuclear electric power
Historically, the greatest increases in production are in natural gas and petroleum. The greatest decline is in coal.
UNITED STATES ENERGY CONSUMPTION
Consumption of energy in the U.S. closely follows the growth in production. The U.S. became energy independent in 2019 when the fracking of natural gas increased beyond the declines in coal and petroleum. Nuclear power and renewables slightly increased after the economic downturn associated with the pandemic.
I call attention to the total renewable energy consumption in 2023 (excluding nuclear electric power) of only 9%. Of that 9%, 60% is from biomass, 11% from hydroelectric and geothermal sources. Wind and solar generation provide the remaining 29%.
Only 3.2% of the total U.S. total energy consumption came from solar and wind power in 2023.
FLOW OF ENERGY THROUGH THE U.S. ECONOMY
(N.B. In my notes, I have used the numbers given in Quads Btu as percentages because they are close to the same for my purposes.
This flow diagram shows, in the variously sized, colored boxes on the left, the sources of energy in the American economy. The orange box and the pink boxes show where energy is processed. The black box on the right shows the amount of energy used in providing goods and services. Combined, it shows the total of energy services that were consumed; and the grey box shows the energy lost in the processes of manufacturing electricity and goods and services. Pollutants compose most of the rejected energy.
a.) 67% of all energy is lost in processing causing pollution. (shown in grey)
b.) Only 33% of all energy that is processed resulted in desired or wanted services in 2022. (black)
c.) Electricity generation was only 35% efficient in the production of useful electrical services. (shown in orange) Much of this was from the inefficiencies in burning coal and natural gas.
d.) In 2023, Solar and wind (yellow and purple) generated only 3.2 % of the electric energy. Biofuels (Light green) and hydro power (dark blue) provide 54% of all renewable energy sources. Nuclear power (dark red) provides 8% of total U.S. power production.
e.) The largest consumption of energy in 2022 was for Transportation (pink). However, 79% of the energy consumed for transportation was “rejected.”
The flow chart of energy in the U.S. clearly shows that fossil fuels used to generate electricity and to support transportation are the largest contributors to CO2 pollution. The efficiency of energy used in producing electricity and the replacement of petroleum used in transportation are the biggest problems that need to be solved in reducing atmospheric pollution. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (I.R.A.) attempts to reduce atmospheric pollution by the conversion of energy supplied by fossil fuels to energy provided by renewable energy. However, the Act does not adequately address either the role of increasing demands for electricity or the efficiency of providing electric power to its users. To date, electricity generation has not substituted for fossil fuels. Increasingly, fossil fuels are needed to provide the products and services to build and maintain new or expanded facilities that generate, distribute, and use electricity. And users, such as A.I., demand additional new energy, putting pressure on energy providers to use fossil fuels to satisfy the additional demands. The I.R.A. also attempts to substitute the enormous amounts of fossil fuel energy used to power conventional automobiles with electric vehicles.
Solar and wind energy are renewable. However, the conversion of that energy to electricity is not renewable. The facilities for harnessing, storing, and distributing renewable energy demand more energy than renewable energy can supply above its uses in the economy, i.e., the energy output is less than the energy input.
PROJECTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES OF ENERGY PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION
Energy is the driving force of the economy. To project its trajectories, many assumptions must be made. The projections, shown below, are based on medium estimates of growth of the economy. They indicate that by 2050 all sectors of the economy will consume more energy. Between 2020 and 2050, U.S. energy consumption is projected to increase in the industrial, and electricity generation sectors, and to decreases slightly in transportation and residential sectors. Only the residential sector declines. The major problem in projecting energy use by sector or fuel type is the varying assumption that are used. Most projections are framed in terms of possibility. I chose the mid-range projections of the EIA (the Energy Information Agency) for illustrative purposes only.
Projection of energy consumption by fuel type shows that petroleum will be the leading source. Both natural gas and electricity from “other renewables” will increase dramatically. Without finding ways of extracting substantial amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere in the next 25 years, the amount of CO2 emissions from burning petroleum and natural gas will continue to pollute at present levels. In the last 25 years, the reduction in the use of coal, a high emitter of CO2, has already occurred.
Another graphic projection, made by the New York Times, has broken down the broad sector analysis more finely as it pertains only to electrical energy. It also projects a ‘high electrification scenario.’ The greatest increase in consumption of electrical energy is projected in passenger vehicles—from 1% to 89%. Electricity use in refining chemicals is projected to increase from 7% to 29%, and residential and commercial space-heating by electricity from 16% to 63%. A difference between this diagram and the preceding one is that total energy use is assumed to decline as renewable energy increases. The assumptions used by the graphic in the New York Times is one of the more optimistic and hopeful projections.
PROJECTED CHANGE IN EMISSION OF CO2
The diagram below indicates the decline in emissions between 2005 and 2023 when natural gas increasingly substituted for coal in electricity generation.
Projections for 2050 indicate reductions between 55% and 79%. Even with high economic growth, emissions are projected to decline only slightly from 2022.; with low economic growth, emissions may continue to decline significantly until the early 2030s and slightly thereafter.
The time to reach goals to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, even to the low levels set by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is truly short. Worldwide, the IPCC said that global emissions in 2020 must be reduced by 43% by 2030 and continue to be reduced even more in the following 20 years. Other reputable climate modelers claim that even more drastic reductions are needed.
By looking at the many graphs presented in this essay, it is obvious that the U.S. will not reduce greenhouse gases sufficiently to meet even the low standards of the IPCC. The U.S. remains the world’s second highest emitter of greenhouse gases. The continuing production of fossil fuels by the United States means that it will be the source of enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, even as the use of coal in generating electricity has declined. China, the largest emitter of GHG, cannot reach those goals because it is now building more coal-fired plants. The rising economic power of India is also based on coal-fired plants.
Low carbon technologies have been seen as ways of reducing the emission of greenhouse gases in the next 30 years. Although most of these technologies have been known for many years, the rate of their implementation has lagged. Even with IRA expenditures to accelerate innovative technologies, their implementation remains in the realm of ‘ifs’ and ‘hopes.’ Both science and technology may exist; but their integration into overall reductions in energy use, and subsequently to lowering emissions, has not been proven. The following diagram indicates that adoption of low-carbon technologies also depends on active consumer involvement and behavioral changes.
To initiate the needed behavioral changes will require drastic economic and political revolutions. These changes are not being discussed by either major political party. Nor are economists and financial leaders discussing the behavioral changes needed to reduce the use of fossil fuels. The task of changing peoples’ behaviors, adequately, is formidable or impossible. Americans and most other humans want to gain, maintain, or expand the benefits of continued, expanded economic growth, which is founded on cheap fossil fuel energy. As such, most politicians must advocate economic growth and the use of fossil fuels on which it depends.
Modern societies, which are dependent on science and technologies, have provided billions of people with longer lives, better health, greater freedoms from the limits of nature. But, in the last few decades, negative aspects of economic growth have become apparent: Eight billion people, living on a small, beautiful, light-blue orb in the vast cosmos, are now consuming the land, air, sea, and organisms which support their very existence. Their inherent impulses to grow and expand have become unbelievably successful with their command of fossil fuel energy. However, humans do not know that limits to their success have been reached. Limits are now apparent but thinking about them is drowned out by the actual benefits of the past many decades.
My little exposition, in diagrams and notes, has shown how we have arrived in the predicament of knowing how energy has both made our lives both better and worse. Fossil fuels, stored millions of years ago, have provided the energy for ‘growth and progress.’ However, the burning of them has suddenly released pollutants that upset ecological and evolutionary processes that cause loss and decline. In the truly short run of politics, increased goods and services outweigh long-term bads and disasters.
The human organism’s evolutionary-derived instinct to reproduce and grow, which is now temporarily freed by energy supplied by fossil fuels, is supported by the politics and economics of growth. However, the natural limits to continued growth of our species, have been reached. Humans cannot stop the natural processes that they have set loose.
By Al Urquhart, a member of Job for Humanity’s advisory board
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