U.S. Energy Sources

[All num­bers are in tril­lion btus, and come from the U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion’s Ener­gy Con­sump­tion by Sec­tor (Tables 2.1a through 2.1f) data through 2021.]

2021 U.S. Ener­gy Con­sump­tion
There are three sec­tors of ener­gy con­sump­tion: elec­tric­i­ty (37.7%), trans­porta­tion (27.6%), and heat­ing (34.7%).

2021 U.S. Ener­gy Con­sump­tion
The same above data, but totaled on the top line, and with heat­ing bro­ken out by sec­tor of use. Heat­ing of indus­tri­al process­es (like paper mills, cement kilns, chem­i­cal plants and steel mills) makes up 67% of all heat­ing sec­tor use, and 23% of total U.S. ener­gy use. Fos­sil fuels make up 79% of total U.S. ener­gy use.

Total U.S. Ener­gy Use by Fuel (1950–2021)
Ener­gy use has near­ly tripled, but has flat­tened out.  The dip in 2020 was due to the pandemic.

Total U.S. Ener­gy Use by Fuel (1950–2021)
[Same data, but in line chart, not stacked.]

“Renew­able” Por­tion of Total U.S. Ener­gy Use
The “renew­able” por­tion of the over­all ener­gy mix over time. 40% is still from pol­lut­ing com­bus­tion sources (bio­mass/waste incin­er­a­tion and bio­fu­els). The good news is that solar is grow­ing most rapidly.

“Renew­able” Por­tion of Total U.S. Ener­gy Use
[Same data but in line chart, not stacked.]

Wind over­took hydro in 2019, and solar over­took bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion in 2018. Bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion flat­lined and is falling, as the grass­roots move­ment against bio­mass, built up by Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, has defeat­ed about 50 pro­posed bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tors between 2010 and 2014, and our work against trash incin­er­a­tion has that indus­try on the decline.  Poor eco­nom­ics and aging facil­i­ties are also caus­ing incin­er­a­tors to close.

U.S. Elec­tric­i­ty Use by Fuel (1950–2021)
The next four charts are just the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor (not trans­porta­tion or heat­ing). The largest sources in 2021 are nat­ur­al gas (32%), coal (26%), and nuclear (22%). Wind comes in at a dis­tant 9%, but is rapid­ly increas­ing, as is solar (2.7%).

U.S. Elec­tric­i­ty Use by Fuel (1950–2021)
[Same data, but in line chart, not stacked.]

Nat­ur­al gas sur­passed nuclear pow­er in 2012 and over­took coal in 2019.

“Renew­able” Por­tion of U.S. Elec­tric­i­ty Use

The renew­able elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor is now most­ly hydro­elec­tric and wind.

“Renew­able” Por­tion of U.S. Elec­tric­i­ty Use
[Same data, but in line chart, not stacked.]

Wind over­took hydro in 2019, and solar over­took bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion in 2018. Bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion flat­lined and is falling, as the grass­roots move­ment against bio­mass, built up by Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, has defeat­ed about 50 pro­posed bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tors between 2010 and 2014, and our work against trash incin­er­a­tion has that indus­try on the decline.  Poor eco­nom­ics and aging facil­i­ties are also caus­ing incin­er­a­tors to close.

Indus­tri­al heat­ing sources

Res­i­den­tial heat­ing sources

Res­i­den­tial solar heat­ing is grow­ing quick­ly and may over­take res­i­den­tial wood burn­ing (and its seri­ous pol­lu­tion haz­ards) in the next few years.

Com­mer­cial heat­ing sources

Trans­porta­tion ener­gy use
As of 2021, 90.4% is oil. 5.5% is bio­fu­els (ethanol and biodiesel) and 4.1% is nat­ur­al gas.  If you fac­tor elec­tric ener­gy use into the total used for trans­porta­tion, elec­tric-pow­ered trans­porta­tion is only 0.08% in 2021.

Bioen­er­gy use by sec­tor
The bio­mass elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor would have increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly since 2005 if not for the grass­roots work we sup­port­ed that stopped mas­sive expan­sion of that industry.

2021 Bioen­er­gy use, by sector

Nat­ur­al gas use, by sector

Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work was found­ed in the late 1990s to help com­mu­ni­ties fight off gas-fired pow­er plants dur­ing the first of two major waves of gas-fired pow­er plant devel­op­ment since that time. We’ve been warn­ing that elec­tric­i­ty (gas-fired pow­er plants) would become the largest sec­tor of demand for (most­ly fracked) gas, but have been unable to get the coal-focused main­stream envi­ron­men­tal groups or foun­da­tion fun­ders to sup­port grass­roots work to stop this. Nonethe­less, hun­dreds of pro­posed gas-fired pow­er plants were blocked by grass­roots groups, large­ly with­out such support.

Coal use, by sector

Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work brought togeth­er a very active “No New Coal Plants” move­ment in 2006 that was the dri­ving force that stopped the vast major­i­ty of over 200 pro­pos­als for new coal pow­er plants around the 2004–2015 time frame.  With coal pro­duc­tion hav­ing peaked in the U.S. and esca­lat­ing coal prices unable to com­pete with rel­a­tive­ly cheap fracked gas (and now wind and solar), coal’s con­tin­ued decline is large­ly due to finan­cial and geo­log­ic realities.

Coal use, by sec­tor (res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial heat­ing close-up)

Trends: fos­sil fuel use declin­ing; gas, wind and solar replac­ing coal
Some analy­sis from our review of the Plan­et of the Humans doc­u­men­tary…

From 2000 through 2019, U.S. pop­u­la­tion grew 17% as elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion fell 2.6%, reflect­ing ener­gy con­ser­va­tion and effi­cien­cy, which should always be high­er pri­or­i­ties than any type of gen­er­a­tion. Total ener­gy con­sump­tion (elec­tric­i­ty, trans­porta­tion and heat­ing) increased 1.6% in that time (because ener­gy use in trans­porta­tion and the com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al heat­ing sec­tors increased), but 99.9% of wind and 62% of solar is serv­ing the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor, where ener­gy demand is falling. So, more wind and solar does not mean more ener­gy use.

The growth of wind and solar since 2000 came while coal, and fos­sil fuel use in gen­er­al, fell.

In the U.S., coal use has declined dra­mat­i­cal­ly, replaced more by fracked gas than renew­ables. The 26% drop in coal use for elec­tric­i­ty was matched by gas, wind, and solar increas­ing by 27%. By total ener­gy con­sump­tion, the 11.6% drop in coal use was matched by gas, wind, and solar increas­ing 11.6%.

Share of U.S. Elec­tric­i­ty Con­sump­tion by Fuel
	Nuclear	Oil	Coal	Gas	Wind	Solar	Bio­mass & Waste Incin­er­a­tion	Hydro	Geot­her­mal	Fos­sil Fuels (coal/oil/gas)
2000	21%	3%	53%	14%	0%	0%	1%	7%	0%	70%
2019	23%	1%	28%	32%	7%	2%	1%	7%	0%	60%
Dif­fer­ence	+2.2%	-2.5%	-25.7%	+17.6%	+7.2%	+1.7%	+0.02%	-0.6%	+0.0%	-10.6%
Share of U.S. Ener­gy Con­sump­tion by Fuel (Elec­tric­i­ty, trans­porta­tion and heat­ing sec­tors com­bined)
	Nuclear	Oil	Coal	Gas	Wind	Solar	Bio­fu­els, Biomass & Waste Incin­er­a­tion	Hydro	Geot­her­mal	Fos­sil Fuels (coal/oil/gas)
2000	8%	39%	23%	24%	0%	0%	3%	3%	0%	86%
2019	8%	37%	11%	32%	3%	1%	5%	2%	0%	80%
Dif­fer­ence	+0.5%	-2.0%	-11.6%	+7.9%	+2.7%	+1.0%	+1.93%	-0.4%	+0.0%	-5.7%