Summary and Final Tasks
Summary
This lesson has been focused on understanding energy use in Pennsylvania and the United States, including basic energy vocabulary (such as Btu and watts); data sources for energy consumption by state; and Sankey diagrams for visualizing energy flows through a state or national energy economy. Apart from the United States being a major energy producer and consumer, we saw the following things from comparing Sankey diagrams and reviewing energy data from the U.S. government:
- The United States as a whole is heavily dependent on fossil energy (coal, oil and natural gas) for virtually every aspect of economic activity, including fueling our cars and powering homes and businesses.
- Some segments of the economy are more heavily invested in certain energy sources. Transportation in the United States, for example, is heavily dependent on oil, while the power generation sector uses hardly any oil.
- While the United States as a whole relies heavily on fossil energy, this is not true of all states individually. Washington, for example, uses a lot of hydroelectricity and very little coal or natural gas.
- Pennsylvania’s mix of energy resources is very close to that of the United States as a whole.
The energy choices that we have made have been driven largely by economics, convenience, and available technology. Coal dominated electric power production for so many years because it was inexpensive to mine, very dense in energy content and easy to transport and store. Transportation still relies primarily on petroleum for many of those same reasons. While the price of oil and gasoline fluctuates (sometimes wildly), petroleum-based fuels can be easily moved around and have a high energy content. Major changes in energy use can happen but are easier to achieve in some areas of the economy than others. Natural gas has easily equaled coal in use for power generation within the span of a few short years, because of the emergence of cheap natural gas for fuel and the ability to use existing power lines to move gas-fired electricity instead of coal-fired electricity. Replacing oil completely in our nation’s energy system is a challenge because it would require technological change on a much larger scale – not only would everyone in the country need to replace their cars at great cost, but new delivery and retailing systems would be needed.
Video: "Avoid the Energy Abyss" (Powering the Planet) (4:17)
Narrator: Old energy technologies can be cleaned up. New ones can come online. Other nations are moving ahead. What will it take to keep the lights on in the United States and avoid the energy abyss? There's no question that transitioning to clean and renewable energy is going to be a huge task, but America has done similar things before. Take the Hoover Dam and the electrification program of the 1930s or the building of the interstate highway system.
John Hofmeister: I am optimistic.
Narrator: John Hofmeister is a former oilman based in Texas. He headed up Shell in the United States. He also wrote a book entitled, Why We Hate the Oil Companies, and he's worried that today America isn't making the right decisions about energy.
John Hofmeister: You need to think of energy in a 50-year time frame and our elected officials are thinking of energy in two-year election cycles. That's ridiculous. And it is going to take us, as a nation, to an energy abyss because you can't design an energy system to replace the 20th century, which is growing old and running out in some cases, you can't replace that with two-year cycles of decision making.
Narrator: Other nations have changed. Look around Copenhagen and you see pedestrian walkways and bikes as a major form of transportation. In response to the oil shocks of the 1970s, Denmark turned away from fossil fuel and towards sustainable energy.
Soren: In Denmark, we had car-free Sundays when nobody was allowed to drive their cars on Sundays. And there was a rationing of fuel and gas.
Lykke Friis: These are sort of things that people remember. And well, we need to change.
Narrator: The U.S. also experienced the oil shocks, with gas lines and angry citizens, and for a while, America got serious about exploring alternatives to imported gasoline and fossil fuel. Here's the energy share of all federal, non-defense R&D investment from 1957 through 2011. Investment ramped up in the oil shock but then went down, down, down. And without serious new commitments, the 2009 stimulus funds for energy will have just been a temporary upward blip.
John Hofmeister: We're not making the decisions at the national level that need to be made in terms of the next decade and the next several decades after that.
Narrator: Hofmeister and other experts look around the world and see other countries moving ahead to defend their nation's energy security.
John Hofmeister: Places like China have a clear plan and they are driving forward and they are building an energy infrastructure for the 21st century, which will perhaps one day supply energy to the world's largest economy, China. not the U.S.
Narrator: In America, energy policies change with each new administration, if not sooner. Since our interview, Denmark's government has changed parties but now former Minister of Climate and Energy, Lykke Friis, doesn't expect energy policy to change that much.
Lykke Friis: Even if we are kicked out of office, this will not lead to a huge change in our energy policy.
John Hofmeister: We need decisions that go beyond a single term of a president, that go beyond a single Congress with a Republican or a Democratic majority, and we're not doing it. Other parts of the world are.
Lykke Friis: All of us have to embark upon this transformation. And the lesson is, it can be done. Because Denmark, we've had also growth rates by 80 percent since the 80s. But our energy consumption and our CO2 emissions have been more or less stable.
John Hofmeister: We're gonna find ourselves, as a nation, entering third-world status when it comes to the reliability of our energy system within a decade if we don't get with a different program. And I don't see any inclination now to make hard decisions. I see divisiveness, I see partisan paralysis, I see short-term political time thinking, and I see dysfunctional government.
Reminder - Complete all of the Lesson 2 tasks!
You have reached the end of Lesson 2! Double-check the to-do list on the Lesson 2 Overview page to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Lesson 3.