(3BL Media/Justmeans) — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has released their annual US energy consumption chart (Click for larger image). Yes, it looks like spaghetti, but it contains a lot of useful information. It shows, on one page, how much energy we used in 2016, and specifically, what sources we got it from and what we used it for.
For starters, it says that we used 97.3 quads, which is short for quadrillion BTU’s. That’s a lot of energy. As Dave Roberts points out in Vox, that’s equivalent to 8 billion gallons of gasoline of 36 million metric tons of coal. It’s also the same amount that we used in 2011 and 2.2 quads more than we used in 2012.
However, in 2012 (Click for larger image), we used 17.4 quads of coal,26 quads of natural gas, 34.7 quads of petroleum, and 4.512 of renewables. Compare that with last year where we used 14.2 quads of coal, 28.5 quads of natural gas, 35.9 quads of petroleum, and 5.407 quads of renewables These four sources account for the bulk of the difference.
Perhaps the most startling information is found on the upper right hand side of the chart. That’s where it shows is the amounted of rejected, or wasted energy (an excellent measure of efficiency) and the amount of useful services received from all that energy.