How much energy does the U.S. waste? 14

Posted 4:06 PM on 11 Sep 2009
by Sean Casten
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lightbulb We must save all the energy we can!At the broadest level, everything we can do to address climate change/national security/energy balance of trade and just about any other meaningful social question associated with our energy use falls into one of three categories:

1. Use less downstream energy. Turn down the thermostat, ride your bike to work, move to a smaller home, etc.

2. Switch upstream fuels. Favor coal in the name of national security. Favor nuclear in the name of CO2. Favor wind in the name of green jobs. Etc.

3. Use less upstream energy. Insulate your home, build CHP plants, recycle your plastic and aluminum waste, etc.

All three have a critical role to play, but note that only the third creates social benefits and can be guaranteed to increase our overall standard of living. In the famous Amory Lovins-ism, no one gives a damn about how much coal, oil or gas they use - they care about how hot their shower is and how cold their beer.

Ergo, we ought to make maximal use of anything that fits into that third bucket as a matter of public policy. Which raises the question: how big is that third bucket? Or, framed another way: how much energy does the U.S. currently waste? Any increase in our efficiency of energy conversion (from upstream fuel to downstream energy) is implicitly a reduction in our energy waste. Tell me how much we waste and you will tell me the maximum size of that third bucket.

How Much do we Consume?

As it turns out, there’s very little good data on how much energy we waste. DOE estimates that we use about 100 quadrillion btus (“quads”) of primary energy per year. But they too often present that data in charts like this one that seem to assume a perfectly efficient economy. As that great philosopher Homer Simpson said, “In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!” And I’m pretty sure thermo says that you can’t get 100 percent of the energy you put in out in a useful form. DOE charts to the contrary notwithstanding…

Nonetheless, this does bound our analysis. If we put 100 quads of primary energy in, we must get 100 quads out somewhere. At the very least, it implies that there can’t be more than 100 quads of wasted energy presently available in the system.

Solid Waste

EPA estimates that the average American produces 1,130 lbs of trash per year. At 4,500 btu/lb and just over 307 million people, that’s 1.6 quads of energy in our trash. Add in 6.5 million metric tons of solid waste in our sewage per year at 10,000 btu/dry ton and that’s another 0.1 quads. So in total, all our solid waste is about 1.7 quads of total energy waste, or 1.7 percent of all our primary energy use.

Industrial Waste

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has estimated that the US could produce 96 GW of electric power from energy that is currently wasted by the US industrial sector. (This waste includes a host of different materials, from paper sludge to waste heat.) RED‘s internal analysis suggests that this may be conservative, but let’s use the LBNL data. Assuming 25 percent fuel-to-power generation efficiency (and assuming further that this represents 100 percent of all energy wasted by the US industrial sector, and not simply the economically recoverable/LBNL-identifiable fraction) that works out to an additional 11.4 quads.

Power Generation Waste

In 2008, we generated 3,806,611 GWh from fossil-fired thermal power plants. Those plants, on average, operate at 33 percent fuel efficiency, meaning that for every 1 unit of electric power generated, 2 units of waste heat were thrown away in cooling towers, rivers and streams. That’s 2 x 3,806,611 GWh of wasted heat, or 26.4 quads up in smoke.

Transportation Waste

The total US transportation sector uses some 28.6 quads of fuel per year. For rather obvious reasons, there’s not a lot of good data on how much of that goes out the tailpipe vs. a more productive use. But conservatively, let’s assume that we get 30 percent of the useful energy out of that fuel (this is considerably higher than a passenger car over normal driving cycles, but probably low for rail, shipping and long-haul trucking on an efficiency per ton-mile basis.) Clearly, this is the least accurate of the numbers, but even at 30 percent, that implies an additional waste of 0.7 x 28.6 or 20 quads of waste, going into tail pipe exhaust, hot brakes, burnt tires, etc.

Total Identifiable Waste

Add those all up and we’ve got 100 quads of primary energy and 60 quads of waste energy. For all the reasons noted above, the waste energy is probably much higher, but even at this level, it is a massive opportunity. Recovering just half of this total would reduce every issue associated with fossil fuel use by one third with no detriment to our standard of living. Getting this waste out of the system ought to be a priority of our national energy and environmental policy.

Comments

Sean Casten is President & CEO of Recycled Energy Development, LLC, a company devoted to profitably reducing greenhouse emissions.

thollandpe Posted 7:06 am
12 Sep 2009
 
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</style> Well said! Our electric energy system is only 32% efficient, see http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec8_3.pdf That's not just fossil fuel, it also includes nuke, hydro,
and wind . . . all the fuels. Just as you say, we throw away twice as much energy as we get
out of the process. So for every unit of
electricity you don't use, three units of energy are saved. That's one helluva return and that's why
conservation and efficiency are so dang effective. You will no doubt get some pseudo-engineer boobs posting
that there's a limiting Carnot efficiency and referencing the laws of
thermodynamics. True that you can't get
100% of the energy out as work but the waste energy is heat, and we do need to
heat up a lot of stuff in this country. 32%
efficiency is abysmal and we need to improve that. FYI, Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Labs says the transportation
sector's efficiency is 25%, see https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/energy/energy.html. Is this what's called a target-rich
environment?
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1. Sean Casten Posted 8:01 am
  12 Sep 2009
  Thanks. Couple responses:
  1. The 32% is only for the thermal plants. Also worth noting that it's probably worse; DOE/EIA has very good data on generation efficiency, but the data on transmission and distribution efficiency is more by inference (e.g., retail sales net of generation). Those are generally estimated in the 8 - 10% range, but are not as robust... and the oft-quoted 33% value is hard to parse when you dig into the raw data as to whether that is delivered or at the generator buss. Either way, it's huge.2. Thanks for the 25% heads up. Glad to see that my conservative guess was indeed conservative!3. Carnot schmarnot. The engineer boobs you reference always seem to forget that Carnot was talking about work cycles that doesn't apply to heat recovery. But I agree... posts like this always attract the boobs! More on that here if you're interested.Sean
  Permalink
  1. Duggles Posted 12:45 am
    13 Sep 2009
    The link to your CHP Primer appears to be broken, as it leads me to a Page Not Found page. For those interested,http://www.grist.org/article/chp-primer-fun-with-thermodynamicsshould be the correct url. (If it's not, boy will I look silly!)
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amazingdrx Posted 8:04 am
12 Sep 2009
Is coal fueled electricty 1/3 the cost of natural gas fueled electricty in terms of fuel cost alone?If so could combined cycle natural gas powered CHP electricty cost the same as steam turbine coal electricty due to the higher efficiency of the gas powered cogeneration?As conversion from coal to natural gas ocurrs, could the supply/demand market rise in the price of natural gas be offset by conservation and renewable energy? It is much easier to fire up a natural gas fueled backup power plant to smooth solar and wind power supply variations, than it is to use coal for renewable energy backup.If solar and ground source heating of buildings replaces natural gas heating, could natural gas consumption remain the same even as it replaces coal as a grid power generation fuel? How much biomass based natural gas (biogas) could be wrung from the waste stream?
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1. Sean Casten Posted 10:10 am
  12 Sep 2009
  Dr. X,Re: coal v. gas, it's not quite so simple, because of the dramatic difference in volatility. At current fuel prices, gas is very close to coal on a $/Btu basis, sufficient that - as you note - the slight premium for gas can be offset by higher gas-to-electric conversion efficiency. That said, the price of coal is remarkably stable over time while the price of gas is remarkably volatile. As such, while you can certainly argue that it makes instantaneous sense to preferentially dispatch efficient gas rather than inefficient coal (as is indeed occurring in some parts of the country right now), that is not to say that we can make the case to build CCGT or gas-fired CHP in lieu of central coal. (That's not to say we can't; just that the decision to invest long-term capital has to include an evaluation of long-term fuel volatility where the decision about what to dispatch tomorrow does not.)This gets to your renewable question as well. Renewables are even less volatile than coal, for rather obvious reasons - but they will be built (so that they can be dispatched) only to the degree that they represent good investments of capital - a function not only of capital costs, but also regulation and the constancy of future regulatory environments. I personally would not invest in solar PV because I cannot see anyway to justify those investments that does not depend heavily on a future subsidy. Others may agree or disagree, but I mention because it points out the degree to which investors may choose not to put the capital up that - if not built - will not be available for dispatch against gas/coal going forward.
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Sean Casten Posted 10:21 am
12 Sep 2009
Also, re: biogas. In theory, it would seem that this ought to be limited to the ~1.7 quads of solid waste listed above. It seems to me that it may be bigger though, because the 100 quads listed by DOE does not appear to include energy inputs to agriculture. Some of that is of course indirectly captured in the sewage solids (your corn consumption being translatable into a roughly equivalent volume of feces production...), but presumably their are greater volumes of digestible materials produced by the agricultural sector independently that's not in that box. My gut feeling is that there's probably another couple quads there, but I'd be surprised if it was much higher. (Fun bit of math: if simply assume that 100% of people's 3500 calorie/day energy consumption ends up in sewage, that works out to something like 0.001 quads. Add in animals, byproduct waste and the odd person who consumes more than 3500 calories per day and you no doubt get a higher number - but I doubt it's five orders of magnitude bigger.)
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1. amazingdrx Posted 11:24 pm
  12 Sep 2009
  I guess the question I should ask now Sean, is what would make people, individuals and corporations invest in efficiency and renewable energy? Safe, secure above average returns on their investments, of course.How to get those returns? Sell the power and/or realize savings on energy bills. Long distance transport is necessary to connect buyers and sellers. Government could build that, an HVDC smart grid, that would be analogous to the interstate highway system.This could also allow a good return on investment in storage. Investors woiuld back solar, wind, biogas, or storage where it was most cost effective, solar in deserts reghions, wind on the plains or coasts, biogas in farming areas, and storage like compressed air in underground caverns or solar thermal in sunny areas or battery and thermal storage in buildings.That's where government investment ought to go, into a national HVDC smart grid. A utility company here could invest in solar in Arizona to sell power to customers here. No time to waste, what the tVA was to the last century, an HVDC smart grid could be to this century.
  Permalink
  1. Sean Casten Posted 6:13 am
    13 Sep 2009
    Agree. My point about solar is simply that we not seek to provide stable above average returns absent larger policy considerations. Exclusive of all subsidies, solar PV reduces CO2 emissions at a cost of $300+ per tonne of CO2 reduced. We don't think of it that way because of all the various tax incentives, capital cost buydowns, etc., but it does represent a social policy decision to commit to that $300+ number. Make that number available to lots of other techs - efficiency, biogas, etc. - and you get the answer to your question of how you make these things happen. Make that number available only to solar and the only thing that happens is solar (plus inevitable pushback from every non-solar interest group.)So I'm back to my usual schpiel: define the goal (waste reduction, CO2 reduction, etc.) provide an incentive for it and then let people allocate resources accordingly. But the goal is not to incentivize investment in specific technologies, or make certain technologies into good investments (no matter how many feed-in tariff advocates argue to the contrary!)
    Permalink
Duggles Posted 2:00 am
13 Sep 2009
I have
a few comments on the article. First, I see that the 2008 LLNL Energy
Flow Chart that THOLLANDPE posted a link to appears to already answer
the question, how much waste is there? The number given is 57.07 Quads
out of ~99.2 Quads. This agrees fairly well with the numbers that you
gave in your conclusion, 60 quads of waste out of 100 quads of primary
energy. Good job on the analysis, Mr. Casten.
With regards to the inclusion of agricultural inputs in the Energy Flow Charts, it seems to me that
the main energy inputs to agriculture would be diesel fuel and
fertilizer. So the fertilizer should be accounted for under
"Industrial" use, and the diesel fuel would most likely be accounted
for under "Transportation" and "Industrial". The rest of the energy
inputs for agriculture would be manual labor and environmental inputs,
like sunshine and rain, and would not be considered in the chart.As
for the transportation wastes, my familiarity is with automotives, but
it is very good to see that you are thinking of energy losses due to
braking and tire replacement, and not just powertrain losses! From
what I recall having learned about the subject, though, the issue of
automotive energy efficiency is largely a matter of capital
expenditures vs. operations and maintenance (o & m) costs.
Unfortunately, there's not much "low-hanging fruit" left in the
automotive sector. The technology exists to improve fuel economy (an o
& m cost) in consumer automobiles, but the trade-off is that this
increases the cost of the car (a capital expenditure). Obviously, when
gas is cheap then few are willing to pay more upfront in order to save
money on gas down the road (car pun ftw). This has been the case in
the past, but there is reason to hope that this will change in the era
of $4 per gallon gasoline. Anyway, my point is that the 20 quads of
waste in the transportation sector is not an easy number to reduce, and
thus not all of the 60 quads of waste is actually an "opportunity".
My
complaints are mostly just a matter of chipping away at the edges of
the argument, though. I agree that there ARE a lot of ways that our
society can reduce waste, whether it be by cogeneration of steam and
electricity, properly insulating our homes, recycling high-value waste
like glass and aluminium, or even just (gasp!) walking or biking to
your destination.
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1. Sean Casten Posted 6:08 am
  13 Sep 2009
  Duggles,Good points. A few miscellaneous responses:1. I'm not sure that the waste isn't significantly higher than estimated here, in no small part because the sector I'm most familiar with (industrial waste) has lots of deeply conservative biases in it's analysis, and suffers from pretty significant data inadequacy. Not the least is that measurement of waste production tends to assume processing steps as impossible to improve. (e.g., we measure the flare gas from a steel mill, but not whether steel could be made in a way to produce different volumes, temperatures or chemistries of flare gas to begin with.) Nice to see the LNNL data ties, but my strong suspicion is that we're both pretty low. (At a macro level, there is also energy entrained in everything we import and export, which does not show up in the DOE flow chart. I have no idea how big that number is, but since our measurement of waste outputs is ultimately dependent on our quantification of energy inputs, my strong suspicion is that reality is bigger than we have been able to measure.)2. Re: agriculture, the biggest input to ag is not fossil, but renewable! Numerous ag losses, from crop spoilage to nutrient run off necessarily include a loss of energy that was first obtained from the sun. That doesn't make it any less wasteful, nor any less valuable if recovered, but does necessarily make the total input volume harder to measure. Indeed, the DOE 100 quad number appears only to include renewable inputs associated with electricity generation, which suggests to me that - for all practical purposes - it essentially ignores energy flows associated with the ag sector. One obvious waste that's often approached from the corners is the caloric processing efficiency of various dietary choices - the analytical equivalent to the steel industry example above, but in the ag sector. Shift our diet proportionally away from beef and toward pigs/chicken/vegetables and we dramatically increase the overall caloric efficiency of the ag system (e.g., more edible calories out per total fossil/solar calories in). This frees up cropland, reduces run off and reduces the production of all other animal byproducts. Some estimates I've seen of that potential are massive, although I claim no personal expertise. Again though, my gut is that those are much bigger than this analysis suggests.3. On the auto side, I take your point, but would be somewhat less pessimistic about it. Getting at auto losses requires a fundamentally different business/policy basket than on the electric, industrial, MSW and ag front, but I think there is still much hay to be made if we targetted. Regenerative braking is an obvious solution now being applied to lots of cars (and the general electrification of drive trains could be taken as a waste reduction measure, to the extent that it serves to remove many of the losses associated with the transmission and part-load inefficiencies.) More broadly though, one's definition of "low hanging fruit" depends on which ladders we choose to lean against which trees - which is fundamentally a matter of public policy. A different set of policy incentives with respect to rail vs. roads and whether we fund our maintainence of oil supply through income taxes or gasoline taxes makes a huge difference in the choices and technologies that society makes, as plenty of european and asian examples show. I come back to the key conclusion: reducing waste ought to be the central pillar of energy/environmental policy - and it would seem that there are many policy choices that could be taken to reduce waste in the transportation sector.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:01 am
13 Sep 2009
There's this political problem in the way now Sean, CO2 or waste reduction just won't get any kind of support from congress, forget subsidies for that. Terrified politicians are running away from any identification with the anti-"global warming" crowd as fast as they can.On the other hand, a national HVDC project can be justified from the point of view of job creation and economic competition. How do we compete with very low wage, no pollution control nations? Dependence on imported energy that is manipulated by multi-national corporations and nations that have an axe to grind with US, will never work.Education, R&D, and technology, those are our traditional advantages. But without the capital we once had, we need something that the TVA and other hydo-electric projects brought to WW II war production. Low cost electricty, it made the aluminum for planes and the enriched uranium and plutonium for the bomb.The path to unsubsidized, inflation fighting, foreign fuel free, renewable energy is a nationwide electricty super highway system. Then let the free market work, a project that restores free market competition will be palatable to beckscrement-phobic politicos. Solar, wind, biogas, efficiency/cogeneration, and energy storage will be competitive. Even the nuke-u-ler crowd can build more nukes in the southland where the majority of the populace actually welcomes contamination as a sign of prosperity! (hehehey) Then sell their extra kwhs all over the country.The problem now is borrowing the money to get that national electrical super grid built. Financial market regulation might stabilize this economic recovery and get international investment dollars. China just signed a contract for 2 gw of solar panels from First Solar. They've got cash and know where to put it. Their BYD plugin hybrid has Warren Buffet's $$, 10% of the company so far and he wants to buy more.Will they invest in our future too? Let's hope so. But why would anyone invest in an economy based on wall street kleptocracy, with a federal reserve controlled by that kleptocracy via a revolving door of trading "bank"/fed officials? To paraphrase Bush the first "Doesn't seem prudent". Re-regulation has to precede further public borrowing for a national HVDC smart grid.Re-regulation looks deader than dead right now. But it's a hard issue to smear with beckscrement. part of the nut wing's big propaganda campaign is villifying wall street/fed corruption. This is going to be interesting.Meanwhile a campaign for zero-carbon footprint living is probably the best alternative for the 10% who actually care about climate change. We will labor mainly in anonymity, unless mass production takes over and propells our favorite green ideas into the mainstream.Large national change can only be based on economics now, climate change arguments have been permanently smeared.
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1. Sean Casten Posted 6:33 am
  14 Sep 2009
  Dr. X,We agree on the long term goal of climate reduction, to be sure, but differ on what we think is the best path to get there. Would an HVDC network accomplish the goal? Maybe, maybe not - after all, that gives market access to the dirty stuff just as well as the cheap. But let's stipulate it will. Would it be a cost-effective route to our shared goal? And would political support stay in place long enough for it to get done? Decidedly "no" to the first, and decidedly "probably not" to the second.I'd be delighted to be proven wrong, and one doesn't need to put goal-focused legislation in a libertarian, free market cloak. But path-based legislation is always going to be dangerous, no matter how well intended.
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  1. amazingdrx Posted 11:19 pm
    14 Sep 2009
    Sean, I see the goal of an HVDC national supergrid would be similar to the goal behind national railroads, interstate highways, and the TVA-type WW II power projects. National economic growth and financial security. The foundation upon which modern nation/states stand. The crumbling of that foundation, signals the fall. The loss of economic growth due to imported/price manipulated energy has shaken our foundation badly. It has us in 2 (3? soon) wars in a region that is known as the "graveyard of empires". These wars have already cost multiples of what a national HVDC grid would.The goal of climate cure will also be helped out, but putting a price on pollution, contamination, and waste treatment, along with a national grid, will make solar, wind, storage, cogeneration/efficiency, biogas, plugin hybrid vehicles, and electric rail much cheaper. Solar investors can build a power plant in the hottest solar area, then sell it all over the country. Local power companies can store it, then sell it to customers when they need it.The goal of climate change remediation ought to go down a different legislative route, gradually making dirtier energy pay it's own way in terms of damage done.Sure legislate a path, to acheive the goal of a firm, indpendent, and stable energy economy to base our prosperity on. Pave the way for dirty coal and nuclear plants to sell their power too. But make them pay. Then let the national energy market, running over the national grid, compare and shop based on price.Investment will rush into wind and solar. When the national power supply is 20% wind/solar in a few years, storage will start to pay good dividends, maybe even farm based biogas will compete.I don't think pricing carbon alone will build a national supergrid, like the interstate highway system it needs government investment and direction. But pricing in the true cost of the damage done by fuel based energy, including loss of growth due to periodic price spike impelled recessions, will restore free market efficiency, the real free market way.
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bailsout Posted 9:58 pm
14 Sep 2009
And if you really want to reduce the upstream/downstream usages, stop procreating. Too simple?
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Posted 4:06 PM on 11 Sep 2009
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