U.S. Energy Use in 2018

[NeoGreen]

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-u-s-energy-use-in-one-giant-chart/

U.S. Energy Use in 2018

According to the research center’s most recent published version of the diagram, U.S. energy use totaled 101.2 quads in 2018.

In case you are wondering, a single quad is equal to 1 quadrillion BTUs, with each quad being roughly equivalent to 185 million barrels of crude oil, 8 billion gallons of gasoline, or 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

[FBaggins]

1. Better to go straight to the source

The Lawrence Livermore National Lab produces these energy flow diagrams annually and periodically does them at the state level as well as for some other countries.

Here's their great resource for pulling them up directly (allowing us to compare the flows to prior years, states to each other, etc.).

https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/commodities/energy

[NickB79]

2. Fossil fuel use declined only 1.6% in 4yr despite the 122% growth in solar

And actually increased from 80.0% to 80.2% from 2017 to 2018!

That's not exactly encouraging, given the crisis we're facing.

[FBaggins]

3. Entirely different scales

Would you rather receive a 1.6% return on a billion-dollar portfolio or a 122% growth rate on $50k?

More importantly, there are few cases where they are substitutes for each other. Just transportation and that's a tiny piece of the solar pie (3% if I read it correctly)

[NickB79]

4. I'm more concerned by the increase in fossil fuel use from 2017 to 2018

That shouldn't be happening.