Ned Ford is a long-time Sierra energy expert in Ohio. He is the kind of guy whose quantitative energy analyses make me look petty and shallow by comparison.
Coal-fired generation dropped 8.5 % in 2016, compared to 2015. Gas-fired generation replaced less than half of the losses in coal. Renewables and energy efficiency accounted for the majority of the loss in coal-fired generation.
So when the industry tries to tell you that it is gas that is displacing coal, the data show that it is actually Clean Energy that is winning!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Ned Ford <Ned.Ford@fuse.net>Date: Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 9:36 PM
Subject: [GW-ACT-LEADERS] 2016 U.S. Electricity
To:
CONS-SPST-GLOBALWARM-CHAIRS@lists.sierraclub.org
Hi Folks,
Here are some preliminary numbers for 2016. EIA just released these
last Friday, so they are very fresh, although a few people have seen
some of this coming by watching the monthly reports.
U.S. coal generation fell from 33.18% of total generation to 30.4%
of generation. That's an 8.5% reduction in coal use.
Natural gas generation rose from 32.66% of total generation to
33.84%. Natural gas is officially the largest source of electric
generation in the U.S.
Note that the increase of natural gas was only 42.51% of the
decrease of coal. Wind and solar made up most of the difference.
Efficiency caused the rest of the decrease and more, as follows.
Wind increased from 4.67% of total generation to 5.55%.
Solar increased from 0.94% of total generation to 1.38%. EIA
started estimating the amount of distributed (behind-the-meter)
generation in the U.S. three years ago, but this estimate is
utility-scale solar only. The two previous years where EIA
estimated distributed solar varied a lot, so I'm happy to guess that
total solar is about 35% larger than this reported value, but don't
anyone quote that. They reported their estimate for 2016, but I
haven't taken the time to find it and plug it into my spreadsheet.
Efficiency is impossible to measure accurately. It is much large
than most people think. My approach pegs U.S. electric utility
efficiency at a rate of new savings of about 1.7% in 2016. But that
obscures the fact that what actually happened in 2016 was that
cumulative efficiency programs and efficiency standards eliminated
something more than ten percent of total electricity consumption
which would have happened without the efficiency. In other words,
efficiency has eliminated all new growth since the Great Recession.
It has also saved several tens of billions of dollars per year.
U.S. electricity spending in 2016 was $381 billion (down $10 billion
from 2015). It is also impossible to know exactly how much growth
would have happened without the efficiency, but it is a safe bet
that that $10 billion in savings was due to efficiency. Without
efficiency there would probably have been more growth, and the
savings are probably larger.
To accurately estimate efficiency savings you must decide on a start
year. Or you can do as I have done here, and estimate savings for a
single year - somewhere between $38 billion and perhaps $48
billion.
Skip Laitner testified to Congress in 2006 or 2007 that efficiency
had added 77% of all new capacity to U.S. energy from 1970 to 2005.
That is all fuels, and includes the substantial savings caused by
the CAFE standards. But it also gives a sense of the power and
importance of efficiency.
I can get into details of all of this, but I find that there is very
little interest in the fine grained info. I encourage anyone who is
interested in solving climate change to contact me for updated
information about our efficiency programs in Ohio. They are hardly
the strongest in the nation, but we have eliminated over 8% of
utility carbon in seven years as of the end of 2015. I'm going to
update the Ohio numbers after I post this message. Our Ohio
programs have created about $10 billion in savings, $6 billion of
which have been realized and $4 billion of which are assured by
installed hardware with remaining useful life. Most states don't
produce the sort of data which is necessary to do this sort of
calculation accurately, so the Ohio experience is important in that
it is an example of how powerful efficiency is, and how much money
it saves.
- Ned
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