World Energy Flows
By Barry Ritholtz - June 16th, 2011, 3:16PM
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Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
June 16th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
This graphic ignores the most important aspect of our energy consumption… half of the energy which is generated by the sources at the left of the chart does not make it to the final services at the right of the chart… the energy is lost in the conversion and transportation process… and ends up as waste heat byproduct.
MIT Technology Review recently had a similar graphic which did include the wasted energy flows.
Improving our energy efficiency will need to be a significant part of a successful energy strategy as the sources of energy on the left of the graphic are limited and ever more expensive.
June 16th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Maybe I am not reading this chart correctly, but I think the Car and Truck under motion should be reversed. Correct me if I am wrong.
June 16th, 2011 at 6:59 pm
This is very interesting, but what is also key to note is how much energy is wasted – as socaljoe mentions. See this for the United States in 2009: http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2011/usenergyuse.jpg
I wasn’t able to locate the chart for the world.
June 16th, 2011 at 10:30 pm
I’ve seen this graphic before, but never tire of looking at it again. Thanks, Barry!
I’ve been meaning to figure out if electric cars are more efficient on an energy basis, or just on a carbon basis. Electricity is a high quality power source, in that it’s highly refined by the time that it gets sent to your outlet. Therefore energy efficiency at the end use segment filters back many times over into less energy needed at the power plant or original power/fuel source. Therefore it should be deployed where highly refined energy sources are most needed.
June 17th, 2011 at 12:11 am
Bruman,
The May/June 2011 issue of MIT Technology Review just had an interesting article about the carbon footprint of various energy sources.
Plug-in electric vehicle emit 210 grams of CO2 / 1000 BTU vs. 95 grams of CO2 /1000 BTU for gasoline powered cars.
That’s right, plug-in electrics have twice the carbon footprint of gas powered vehicles… not surprising when you consider a plug-in electric is powered mostly by coal (in the US).
To make a plug-in electric clean it must be paired with a photovoltaic charging system.
June 17th, 2011 at 8:11 am
@socaljoe
Do you happen to have a link to the article you’re referencing?
I searched the MIT TR and was unable to come up with it.
I would love to read it as every time I try to get a straight answer on electric v. gas I end up getting wildly disparate answers.
Not saying the tech Review is the end-all when it comes to these matters, but I do consider them to be pretty reliable.
Thanks much.
June 17th, 2011 at 11:02 am
socialjoe: I had a feeling it might be like that. Without a cleaner electricity source, all this is doing is displacing the blame for pollution… it’s not the cars, it’s those darned electricity plants that fuel the cars.
Actually, I guess it’s worse than that, because if your figures are correct, the electric cars put more than twice as many tons of CO2 than the gasoline powered cars. It’s even worse if you figure that all the batteries in the electric cars tend to make them heavier, and so 1000 BTU doesn’t even get the car going as far.
Hybrid cars are excellent, though, because they generate the electricity from the car’s motion. This makes the hybrid get many more miles to the gallon without requiring any of the electricity that the plug-in would require.
June 17th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Of course the source of the energy makes a difference.
So for people living in California, whose electric utilities are over over 70% “clean” but less than 20% renewable (as of May) and driving electric cars, they do not contribute anything near as high as the CO2 count of the MIT prediction, but it still is not a sustainable consumption.
Gasoline powered cars, including parallel hybrids, in California are both higher contributors to the CO2 levels and consuming an unsustainable resource.