Where U.S. Energy Comes From:

Want to know where U.S. ener­gy cur­rent­ly comes from? Check out this new series of charts we just updat­ed, based on data through August 2016, with pro­jec­tions for all of 2016. Find all of them here: www.energyjusticenetwork.org/energysources

Here are some of the highlights:

• Over­all ener­gy demand peaked in 2007. Ener­gy demand is bro­ken down into elec­tric­i­ty, trans­porta­tion and heat­ing sec­tors. Elec­tric­i­ty and trans­porta­tion sec­tor ener­gy use also both peaked in 2007. Heat­ing sec­tor peaked in 1970.
• Oil, gas, then coal are still our top three ener­gy sources, fol­lowed by nuclear in 4th place.
• Coal use is falling dra­mat­i­cal­ly, while gas use is ris­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly. In 2012, gas over­took nuclear as the sec­ond largest elec­tric­i­ty source after coal. Gas will soon over­take coal as well.
• As we pre­dict­ed, the largest sec­tor of nat­ur­al gas use is now for elec­tric­i­ty (over­tak­ing the indus­tri­al heat­ing sec­tor), as we’re in the mid­dle of a sec­ond wave of con­struc­tion of gas-fired pow­er plants, with at least 300-some pro­posed in recent years, many of which are now online. We still import more LNG than we export, so the gas mar­ket is large­ly feed­ing elec­tric pow­er plants, not exports.
• Despite sev­er­al nuclear reac­tors clos­ing in recent years, nuclear ener­gy use is steady and slight­ly increas­ing (exist­ing plants are being run harder).
• Wind and solar are grow­ing fast, but are still small.
• Bioen­er­gy is still the largest form of “renew­able” ener­gy, even though it’s dirty, and worse for the cli­mate than coal. Thank­ful­ly, it’s stag­nat­ing since 2014 and stopped its rapid increase.
• Heat­ing fuel use is down a lot since 2014, prob­a­bly due to glob­al warm­ing and record high tem­per­a­tures, since it’s most­ly res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial heat­ing. Indus­tri­al heat­ing (the largest part of it) has­n’t fall­en much in that time.
• Bio­mass incin­er­a­tion peaked in 2014 and is now falling, thanks in large part to our activist net­work fight­ing off so many pro­posed facil­i­ties. Wood for home heat­ing is falling fast, which is also good.

See more at www.energyjusticenetwork.org/energysources