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What Percentage of Energy Consumed in the United States is Currently From Renewables?

July 2nd, 2008 · 1 Comment

Taking a short break from examining a potential British response to climate change, I thought I’d provide a couple of charts detailing current generation capacity in the United States broken down by source. As you can see, as of 2007, 10.7 percent of the United States electricity comes from renewable sources.

U.S. Electric Net Summer Capacity

U.S. Electric Net Summer Capacity, 2003-2007

(Megawatts)
Source 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Total 948,446 962,942 978,020 986,215 998,837
Renewable Total 96,847 96,357 98,746 101,934 106,554
Biomass 9,628 9,711 9,802 10,100 10,313
Waste 3,758 3,529 3,609 3,727 3,881
Landfill Gas 863 859 887 978 1,034
MSW 2,442 2,196 2,167 2,188 2,204
Other Biomass 453 474 554 561 643
Wood and Derived Fuels 5,871 6,182 6,193 6,372 6,432
Geothermal 2,133 2,152 2,285 2,274 2,294
Hydroelectric Conventional 78,694 77,641 77,541 77,821 77,833
Solar/PV 397 398 411 411 498
Wind 5,995 6,456 8,706 11,329 15,616
Nonrenewable Total 851,599 866,585 879,274 884,281 892,284
Sources:
Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-860, “Annual Electric
Generator Report.”DOE

Interesting as far as electricity goes. But where do we get our energy from? Here’s another chart from the DOE. Note that the United States produced approximately 101 Quadrillion Btu of energy last year. For our purposes, this is convenient. While the numbers below are in Quadrillion Btu’s they can also be looked at, more or less, as percentages of a hundred.

U.S. Energy Consumption by Energy Source, 2003, 2007

(Quadrillion Btu)
Energy Source 2003 2007
Total 98 101
Fossil Fuels 84 86
Coal 22 22
Coal Coke Net Imports 0.05 0.03
Natural Gas 22 23
Petroleum 38 39
Electricity Net Imports 0.02 0.11
Nuclear 8 8.4
Renewable 6 7
Biomass 2.8 3.6
Biofuels 0.414 1.018
Waste 0.4 0.4
Wood Derived Fuels 2 2
Geothermal 0.3 0.3
Hydroelectric Conventional 2.8 2.5
Solar/PV 0.064 0.080
Wind 0.115 0.319
Sources:Non-renewable energy: Energy Information Administration (EIA), Monthly Energy Review (MER) March 2008,  DOE/EIA-0035
(2008/03) (Washington,DC, March 2008,)   DOE

Just a couple of quick thoughts on these statistics.

First, non-fossil fuel energy accounts for just 14% of the energy consumed by the United States. About half of that is renewable and half of that is nuclear. Achieving carbon neutrality would require an increase in our renewable/sustainable energy seven times over what we currently produce.

The DOE’s goal is to produce 20% of the United States’ energy needs by wind by 2030. In 2007, wind produced 0.3 percent of the U.S. energy requirement. Wind production would have to be increased by 6,700%. That’s 67 times as many wind farms in existence today.

In case the charts didn’t do it for you, try a couple of graphs. This first one breaks down production by source for the year 2000.

This second one details whether that energy is consumed by industry, transport, residential or commercial customers.

Articles In This Series:
Articles In This Series:
Part 1: How Viable is Renewable Energy?
Part 2: Can the Electric Car Save the American Way of Life?
Part 3: What Percentage of Energy Consumed in the United States is Currently From Renewables?
Part 4: Carbon Sequestration. Of Jet Emissions?
Part 5: Professor David MacKay’s View of Future Britain’s Energy Use

 

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1 comment for this entry ↓

  • 1 David MacKay // Aug 28, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    Nice article!
    I think your top table, “electrical capacity (MW)”, isn’t quite the same as “amount of electricity generated”. For a typical hydro facility, for example, the “capacity” is a lot bigger than the average power generated. To get the “amount generated”, you need another table; they usually give the amount generated in TWh (per year). When you find that, you can note the load factor, which is the ratio of the average power to the capacity. Nuclear load factor is probably about 0.8-0.9; hydro is probably about 0.2; wind is about 0.25.

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