The United States Uses 39% of the Energy It Produces, Wastes 61%

I first saw this format for displaying this data while an undergrad in the 80's. I have referred to my text many times over the years until I discovered the data being updated and maintained at LLNL.

I find the wording of the Tree Hugger's article title a bit misleading, stating that the US wastes 61% of the energy it produces. However, the graph is labeled Estimated U.S. Energy Use in 2012. It does not say this is the energy produced in the U.S., but energy used in the U.S.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. Only produced 79.1 quads in 2012. While it's very possible that the percent energy rejected is the same, but that's still no excuse for being misleading. But if the majority of the transportation and energy generation energy was imported, then the percent produced that was wasted would go down significantly.

I don't believe that's the not the point of the article....but come on.....be accurate.

Nowhere in that chart does it describe the energy being used by the government, or that is being used by individuals, households, and corporations in complying with government laws and regulations.

I think it's pretty obvious where this 61% of our energy is being wasted...

Especially when 53% of the population is carrying the other 47% on it's back. My car wouldn't run very efficiently if I was always having to tow another car around all the time.

I really hate these types of misinformation propaganda. I'm certain that Lawrence Livermore produced this graphic but the TreeHugger author of this tips their hand by linking to the Laboratory home page and not the research paper that generated the report. It would've been interesting to see the graphic authors reasons for parsing out which energy was considered service and rejected. If an ideal Carnot cycle engine in converting thermal energy into mechanical energy (for the load factors) converts only 40% of the energy into mechanical but a real energy machine converts 38% will 62% be considered rejected energy or 5% be the rejected energy (2*100%/40).

When a very complicated topic gets streamlined into a very simple graph, a lot of pertininent information gets lost.

I really like this graph, as far as it goes. I'd really like to see the breakdown for the wastage in each portion of the pink boxes, in short, the efficiency of each type of energy input, such as electricity to electric car transportation so we'd be able compare hybrid city trucks to natgas and diesel. Poorly insulated houses, poorly built offices, big cars carrying around what is essentially an inflated sense of material worth, huge houses in Florida with one old widow waiting to die, empty houses with acres of lawn, waiting for someone to come back to them, potatoes being shipped across country to be sorted, and back again to be bagged (my son's a long haul truck driver). Yeah, we waste a ton of energy, and food, and material. Energy hogs, pooping half digested heat. Nice pic, eh?

What's the big deal,, just produce more energy....Oh that's right, we already have more capacity than we can use.....This entire subject is a moot point, imo.....If I'm using the energy, no matter what for, it's not being wasted.....If the efficiency of generation or distribution is improved, who benefits?, the power company's shareholders, because of increased profits?, the economy, because of jobs being created?, the politicians, who can appease the environmentalists?, well I'm tired of being told indiscriminately, by people who have no idea what the're talking about, to stop wasting energy.... I'm not wasting it, I'm using it....

There's a point to be made there, but they miss it entirely.

We are still building cavernous "mcmansions" which to me, is just stupid. These massive boxes have to be heated and cooled all year.

I'm not suggesting laws be implemented to stop them, but we really need to look at how we use the energy that's available...we waste a bunch of it, by our own actions and decisions.

I was recently working in one of these houses, the AC was running constantly, and I noticed that the pilot light in the gas log fireplace was burning; the glass and metal on the front of the fireplace were hot to the touch.

This was just one home in a neighborhood of a couple thousand...all built the same way. There was no way to cut off the pilot light, (individually), that I could find. I wonder how much natural gas is being needlessly burned up, and how much extra AC it takes to compensate for the heat being created?

GA

If I remember this correctly, there once was a Quaker living in the White House that turned up the air conditioner in the summer so they could have a fire going in the fireplace.

WTF? Seriously?

So what you are saying is you want the most wasteful entity in the US to add more irrational government mandated rules and laws on how we can live to the already oversized list"?

It will be a cold day in hell before I let anyone but me make the decisions or mandate what size of house or anything else I own for me. Especially over the concerns of half wit uneducated environmentalists.

I work for my money that pays for such things and damn well will be the one who decides what I do with them as efficiently or as wastefully as I so choose. Besides from the government's standpoint big energy consuming houses bring in loads of tax money where ase tiny energy efficient ones don't. Simply put their regulating the size and efficiency of what we own will cut their own throats on tax revenue and they know it.

No, I specifically said that I wasn't suggesting that laws be passed.

On a personal level, I don't understand why people would want to live in these houses...but that's just me. I definitely wouldn't have a fairly large pilot light running 24/7/365, on my gas log fireplace, and I would never buy a house that had huge expanses of open air that had to be heated and cooled.

The completely inefficient use of energy just bugs me, that's all. These same people run out and buy CFL's, in hopes that their $400 a month electricity bill will go down.

This statement is asinine:

"Even if we can never get to 100% because of the laws of physics, we could get much closer than we are now."

As previous posters already pointed out, if we insist on changing the form of the energy (e.g. thermal to electric) we'll only get closer to something like 50% not 100%

This reminds me of the 6th grade, where the teacher, Mrs. Leavitt, said that if you turn on the faucet in the yard, you are wasting water. I pointed out that you are using that water, but not wasting it. The water in the pipes comes from the river. It is the water that does not come through your pipes that is being wasted (it keeps going down the river, but is not used). I'm not sure she understood.

That is so very telling about so many things. It would appear Mrs. Leavitt was simply parroting something she was told to be true without really thinking it through in a critical manner. I'm afraid many issues these days are shaped by non-thinking parrots who are only too willing to let someone else do the "thinking" for them.

When we stop asking questions, we are doomed.

Cheers !!