Energy Politics
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It is extremely difficult for any person born into industrial society to understand any alternative. Pre-industrial life is now labeled poverty, certainly no one wants poverty. Industrial life is defined by one thing: energy consumption, almost exclusively provided by fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas.
The US Energy Information Agency has put out a handy chart (here) on US energy use. You can see from the chart, quite unsurprisingly, oil remains the most used energy source, almost 40%. Transportation uses 70% of that. A simple conclusion from this fact, we will not electrify American car culture – bet on it.
At one-third of the total, natural gas is now a major share of US energy use. Over the last three decades, gas experienced the largest growth in the energy sector, both in the US and around much of the rest of the world. Across the ocean, this is demonstrated by Europe's current energy “crisis.” The NYT has a piece, and remember reading the NYT is like reading the old Soviet Pravda, you have to know how to read it, unfortunately most who do, don't. Nonetheless, the piece lays out a number of the issues, many needlessly being aggravated by the US National Security State. Europe is indeed growing ever more reliant on Russian natural gas. The piece's most troublesome statement,
“Nord Stream 2 is a private-sector project,” the new German chancellor told reporters. The ultimate decision over approval of the pipeline, he said, will be made by “an agency in Germany, completely nonpolitically.”
Energy is, always has been, and always will be an entirely political issue. That we don't have an energy politics, or more accurately, it's always been controlled by a very few, is another matter. For the United States, a new energy politics would immediately consist of two things, conservation and getting more efficient. For a long time, I foolishly believed information technologies might be very helpful in this regards, instead we got asocial media. Phew! Talk about wasted energy.
After transportation, the largest sector for US energy use is industry at 35%, then 16% residential, and 12% commercial. We need to develop energy triage thinking, understanding where to best focus to stop the heaviest bleeding. Most amusingly revealed, after all these years some of the wrong people have indeed infiltrated the former and really the still Atomic Energy Commission, now known as the Department of Energy. The chart's bottom exposes the great inefficiency of the electricity sector. 65% of all fuel burned is lost. That's basic physics.
Leading to an important and not well known fact, all fossil fuels are ancient sunlight. The sun is life for the planet, there's more than enough for everyone. We need to figure out how to better use it – the quicker the better.
On average, per person energy use in the United States is four times more than the rest of the planet, though depending on where you're comparing, it varies widely. For example, Western Europe compared to the US uses a little more than half per person, China one fifth, while great parts of the global South use less than 5%. The American model for energy use was never exportable, the Chinese are just learning that. Over the last four decades, it's been a model increasingly unobtainable for an ever larger number of Americans. How do you like the politics that's helped create?
A new politics of energy starts with understanding how we, everyone, currently use energy and ends with understanding the only real energy solutions are those that can in part be utilized by all, all 8 billion of us.
Happy New Year