All this talk about savings and numbers has lead me to wonder how much savings would actually occur in totality by playing around with savings in different areas. First, I looked at the different groupings of the various energy sectors. These sectors include: Nuclear: 20.7%, Hydro 6.7%, Natural Gas 16.5%, Petrol and Others 4.7%, Coal 51.4%. These groupings are for the net generation of electricity only.
I will try to use what I feel are modest and reasonable numbers. Let's say we can improve nuclear by 5% (we find some ways to be a little more efficient). Let's say hydro is ~2% (Maybe we put in more efficient generators), Let's say Natural Gas ~5%, Petrol and Others, ~3%, Coal let's say ~4%. So what would be our overall savings just for the net electricity?
The new percentages would be: Nuclear: 19.665%, Hydro 6.566%, Natural Gas 15.675%, Petrol and Others 4.559%, Coal 49.344%
That gives a new total of 94.984%. So in electricity alone, we have skimmed off ~4.191% (Not too bad)
Keep in mind that this 4.191% increase is just from improving manufacturing of the electricity by doing whatever we can, no matter the cost.
Now, we also know that the total use of power is grouped into three major sectors, residential, industrial and commercial. The percentages are: Residential 36%, Industrial 29%, and Commercial 35%. So let’s assume we use energy saving devices, low power white LED lighting, and anything else one could think of. This would apply to both Commercial and Residential electrical power usage. So, that should be compounded to the 4.191% total power savings we got just from trying to improve how we make the power. So this means that I would originally have 100% power used from the electric source. From my savings, I now have 95.809 as my net total electricity, 36% of which comes from Residential, 35% commercial, and 29% industrial.
Let’s further say that the technology to save power in residential and commercial will be roughly the same. However, commercial uses power on a 24-7 basis, whereas residential has peak hours. So let’s just assume that every 1 saving in residential is going to be 1.5 times the amount in commercial. Let’s say residential saves, 3% all together. That means commercial will save around 6%. Let’s leave industrial alone to make warren happy. So this means the new total power use will be: Residential: 34.92%, Commercial: 32.9%, and Industrial 29%. That means the net difference in savings will be (100-91) = ~3.18%.
So that means we save another 3.18% on top of the 95.809% we saved when making the power. So now we are down to 92.629%. By doing so little, we have already chopped down the net electrical power consumption by 7.371%. (Now were getting some where)
Now, just for the hell of it, let’s say we switch over to renewable sources. Let’s say we exploit wind farms, as warren seems to like, and get perhaps 2% of the total power from wind farms for the U.S. Also, let's say we use have some sort of solar-oil power station, where the sun heats the oil in a tube via reflectors, and gives us 0.5% total US power. Also, let’s say we can use geothermal sources and get another 0.5% power production from that. That means we can further reduce another 3% from the generation of power. Recalculating the values gives a net savings in the end of: 10.371% in terms of electricity.
Furthermore, we know that out of all the natural gas consumption, 25% goes to electrical production, 25% to residential, 16% to commercial, and 34% industrial. We agreed to leave industrial alone, so well do just that. So let’s reduce residential and commercial by 5%, and we will stick with the 5% reduction we used earlier in electrical. That means additional savings of 3.3% for all natural gas usage in the US, not just for electricity.
What about oil. That is another big component of our dependence on energy. Well, only 1.3% of our distillate oil goes to making electricity. In fact the percentages are:
Residential: 10.7%
Commercial: 5.4%
Industrial: 3.7%
Oil Company: 0.8%
Farm: 5.1%
Electric Power: 1.3%
Railroad: 4.9%
Vessel Bunkering: 3.4%
On-Highway: 59.6%
Military: 0.6%
Off-Highway: 4.4%
Other: 0.0%
Ok, so let's impose regulations in parenthesis, and their associated new percentages:
Residential (6%): 10.058%
Commercial (6%): 5.076%
Industrial (0% I left it alone): 3.7%
Oil Company (1%): 0.736%
Farm (1%): 5.049%
Electric Power (3%): 1.261%
Railroad (1%): 4.851%
Vessel Bunkering (1%): 3.366%
On-Highway (Lets say 20%, this would be tough, but not unrealistic to achieve): 47.68%
Military (0%, well leave them alone): 0.6%
Off-Highway (5%): 4.18%
Other: 0.0%
Total of Distilled Savings: 13.443%. That is allot of savings for not asking too much.
This means we save ~10.371% in electricity production, and ~13.443% in distillate oil consumption.
So let's try not to be so dismissive about making changes that clearly would NOT destroy our economy or destroy our industry. It is very possible to make great strides in efficiency, *if we want to*. I was very moderate in how much savings I imposed. If you increase them, you will get even better results. The only area I was critical was in on-highway consumption by 20% because we already have the ability right now to make our cars ALLOT more fuel efficient. It just amounts to taking cars that average 18mph highway and turning them into 21.6mph on high way. Hell, my car already gets 24-mph city, and its a 4 door accord not a tiny pinto. So there is no reason why that can't be done.
As I alluded to earlier, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
, nearly half of this for treatment of the wastes stored on the site.
