![]() ![]() It costs less than $0.50 to store a barrel of oil, or its equivalent in natural gas, but it costs $200 to store the equivalent energy of a barrel of oil in batteries.Ģ0. It costs about the same to build one shale well or two wind turbines: the latter, combined, produces 0.7 barrels of oil (equivalent energy) per hour, the shale rig averages 10 barrels of oil per hour.ġ9. Over a 30-year period, $1 million worth of utility-scale solar or wind produces 40 million and 55 million kWh respectively: $1 million worth of shale well produces enough natural gas to generate 300 million kWh over 30 years.ġ8. ![]() Global spending on data centers is more than $100 billion a year-and rising. Every $1 billion spent on data centers leads to $7 billion in electricity consumed over two decades. Global spending on new jets is more than $50 billion a year-and rising.ġ6. Every $1 billion in aircraft produced leads to some $5 billion in aviation fuel consumed over two decades to operate them. electricity demand would require 1,000 years of production by the Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory).ġ5. To make enough batteries to store two day's worth of U.S. Batteries produced annually by the Tesla Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory) can store three minutes worth of annual U.S. Today, barely two hours of national electricity demand can be stored in all utility-scale batteries plus all batteries in one million electric cars in America.ġ3. For security and reliability, an average of two months of national demand for hydrocarbons are in storage at any time. Since 1995, total world energy use rose by 50 percent, an amount equal to adding two entire United States’ worth of demand.ġ2. Efficiency increases energy demand: since 1995, energy used per byte is down about 10,000-fold, but global data traffic rose about a million-fold global electricity used for computing soared.ġ1. Efficiency increases energy demand: Since 1995, aviation fuel use/passenger-mile is down 70 percent, air traffic rose more than 10-fold, and global aviation fuel use rose over 50 percent.ġ0. Efficiency increases energy demand by making products & services cheaper: since 1990, global energy efficiency improved 33 percent, the economy grew 80 percent and global energy use is up 40 percent.ĩ. Since 1995, total world energy use rose by 50 percent, an amount equal to adding two entire United States’ worth of demand.Ĩ. hydrocarbons use-America uses 16 percent of world energy. electricity (impossible soon, infeasible for decades) would leave untouched 70 percent of U.S. hydrocarbon-based electric generation over the next 30 years would require a construction program building out the grid at a rate 14-fold greater than any time in history.ħ. It took a half-century for global petroleum production to expand “only” ten-fold.Ħ. Renewable energy would have to expand 90-fold to replace global hydrocarbons in two decades. A 100x growth in the number of electric vehicles to 400 million on the roads by 2040 would displace five percent of global oil demand.ĥ. When the world’s four billion poor people increase energy use to just one-third of Europe’s per capita level, global demand rises by an amount equal to twice America’s total consumption.Ĥ. ![]() The small two-percentage-point decline in the hydrocarbon share of world energy use entailed over $2 trillion in cumulative global spending on alternatives over that period solar and wind today supply less than two percent of the global energy.ģ. Hydrocarbons supply over 80 percent of world energy: If all that were in the form of oil, the barrels would line up from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, and that entire line would grow by the height of the Washington Monument every week.Ģ. (See the full report for explanations, documentation, and citations.) Realities About the Scale of Energy Demandġ. Herein, then, is a summary of some of the bottom-line realities from the underlying math. So, in my recent Manhattan Institute report, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking,” I did just that. Bill Gates has said that when it comes to understanding energy realities “we need to bring math to the problem.” Regardless of one’s opinion about whether, or why, an energy “transformation” is called for, the physics and economics of energy combined with scale realities make it clear that there is no possibility of anything resembling a radically “new energy economy” in the foreseeable future. A week doesn’t pass without a mayor, governor, policymaker or pundit joining the rush to demand, or predict, an energy future that is entirely based on wind/solar and batteries, freed from the “burden” of the hydrocarbons that have fueled societies for centuries. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |