US Energy Use Analysis

To motivate many of the ideas I’ll present, including the Integrated Heating & Refrigeration System, we need to look at how energy is used in the US.

One of my goals is to reduce energy use in the US by at least 50%, with better quality of life and a thriving economy. I know this may sound overly optimistic, or downright crazy. But I hope to convince you that this is not only feasible, but desirable.

Here are statistics on US Energy Usage by Sector: Residential 21%, Commercial 17%, Transportation 28%, and Industrial 34%.

We’ve already been discussing my ideas for making Transportation much more efficient. If we have the vehicle not weigh more than the cargo, we can gain a factor of 10 because we have a 4,000 pound car carrying 200 pounds of people, and 20 pounds of groceries. We gain another factor of 10 if the people don’t have to go along to get the groceries, so we’ve gone from 4,220 pounds to 40 pounds (20 pounds of groceries and 20 pounds for the vehicle).

You might be thinking that only works for automobiles, but trucks and other vehicles carry a lot more people and freight. Automobiles account for about 1/3 of transportation energy usage, and light trucks for another 28%, and I see a lot of light trucks used like automobiles, so I think my analysis can still hold.

I’m not claiming that we will reduce the total energy used for Transportation by a factor of 100 for several reasons: sometimes we really do need to move people, and having rapid inexpensive transportation will cause us to use a lot more of it. However, out of the factor of 100 reduction, we should keep at least a factor of about 3-5, that is reduce the energy usage for transportation by 67% - 80%.

You have already seen many ideas to achieve savings in transportation: Autonomous Vehicles, Personal Mobility Vehicles, Mini-Mobility Vehicles, Continuous Convoys, En Route Sequencing, Hierarchical Nesting, Autonomous-Ways, Cloudlet Computing and Communications, and 4-Dimensional Global Maps. I’ll be talking more about how these produce savings, and will introduce many more ideas and analyses about transportation.

But you can see we’re well on our way to reducing energy usage in the US just in this one sector, although Transportation is where I’m most likely to convince you of the biggest savings. J

Let’s look next at Residential energy usage. Space Heating is the biggest use at 37%, then Water Heating 15%, Lighting 14%, Air Conditioning 13%, Refrigeration 9%, Electronics 6%, and Wet-Clean 6% (washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, etc.).

We can get major gains in Space Heating (space inside your home, not heating up the solar system), and Air Conditioning by improved insulation, better windows, and other techniques that are integral to the building designs I’ll be proposing. J

Note the balance of Water Heating and Refrigeration, which is why I’m presenting my ideas on and Integrated Heating and Refrigeration System. I’ll also be presenting innovative ideas on lighting.

Next let’s look at Commercial Energy Usage. It is somewhat similar to Residential Energy Usage, but with a much larger amount of Lighting 35% – they really want you to see the products you are buying – which makes my Lighting innovations even more valuable. Space Heating is down to 18%, partly because most Commercial establishments are open much less than 24 hours a day and 7 days a week (unless you’re in New Jersey, where stores seem open all the time). Note Water Heating and Refrigeration are matched at 8%, which fits well with my innovations. Air Conditioning is about the same at 15%. Electronics is similar at 8%, and Ventilation 8% replaces Wet-Cleaning.

The Industrial Sector relies on specific functions, especially Process Heating 35%. Happily, 30% of Heating is already used for Cogeneration, that is generating power or using the waste heat from one process to drive another process. Machine Drive 18% and Electro-Chemical 3% are specific to the functions. HVAC 7%, Process Cooling & Refrigeration 2% and Facility Lighting 2% are similar to Residential and Commercial so some of our techniques may be useful.

It’s helpful to see which industries use the most energy to see whether our techniques can help. Chemical Production 22% and Metal Smelting & Refining 14% use a lot of energy in their processing, so this isn’t a big surprise. Ironically Petroleum Refining 16% uses a lot of the energy it is supposed to produce.  Fortunately, the techniques we are discussing will significantly reduce the need for petroleum, so we can make progress even in the Industrial Sector.

There is an interesting article in the April 2013 issue of Scientific American about The True Cost of Fossil Fuels, that is how much energy is required to produce energy from each kind of fuel. Hydroelectric, with a ratio of 40,  is by far the most attractive, and Wind, at 20, is second. Gasoline from conventional US oil, at 9, is in the minimum effective range of 5-9 to support a thriving industrial society. Many other fuels are already in the minimum effective range. Tar sands, at 5, is at the very bottom of the range. Ethanol from corn, at 1.4, is barely even breakeven. You need to purchase either the print edition or the digital version of Scientific American to see the details.

To help convince you that this reduction may be possible, here is a diagram of the flows from sources of energy, and how they are used by the various sectors, including wasted energy. It’s a complex diagram, but the key points I want you to notice for now are that Transportation is only about 20% efficient, that is almost all the energy from imported oil goes out the tailpipe of our transportation system. By contrast the Residential/Commercial and the Industrial Sectors are about 80% efficient of energy input to them. The Electric Power Sector is about 30% efficient; I anticipate that the techniques I’m proposing for local generation and conservation will improve this substantially – again, we’ll see how that works out as we progress. 

You may wonder why this is data from 2002, when a 2011 version is available – you will note on the new version that you can’t determine how much of the petroleum is imported, so it hides one of my key points – I wonder why they made that change. L

I’ve combined all the sectors to produce a composite view. Techniques for Space Heating, HVAC, and Cooling, at 18%, can make major improvements. Innovations in Lighting, 9%, will cut this substantially. Water Heating and Refrigeration are balanced, at 9%, so my Integrated Heating & Refrigeration System can have a significant impact. And Transportation, at 27%, we have already talked about substantially reducing. 

So perhaps we can achieve my goal of reducing energy usage by 50% – stay turned and we’ll see. J