
Energy consumption increased at a record rate in 2018 - spac
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/03/26/energy-consumption-increased-at-a-record-rate-in-2018
======
spac
From the article: “Perhaps the most worrying finding in the report is the
threat of a feedback loop between severe weather events and carbon emissions.
According to the IEA, a hotter-than-average summer and colder-than-average
winter led to greater use of heating and air conditioning, which together were
responsible for about half of the rise in energy demand in America and roughly
a fifth of the worldwide increase”

In the same article it points to US and China as the worst offenders. Sure the
availability of cheaper energy may cause increased consumption, but the idea
of this vicious cycle is pretty scary.

~~~
perfunctory
> but the idea of this vicious cycle is pretty scary.

And I suspect it doesn't stop with increased air conditioning. Efforts to
provide relief and rebuild communities after natural disasters will require
more energy still.

~~~
ximeng
Also competition over limited resources means that it is in nobody’s interests
to reduce energy use first.

The only way this gets fixed is with cleaner energy mix and active carbon
removal.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Historically, competition over limited resources has often led to reduction in
population from warfare and disease.

A significant population reduction from the same, today, would reduce carbon
emissions.

This is an observation, _not_ a proposal, suggestion, or endorsement.

~~~
adrianN
I don't have a crystal ball, but I think that a major war that kills enough
wealthy people to more than offset its own carbon cost is relatively unlikely
during the next ten years. Unfortunately the next ten years are what
determines whether we will be able to limit global warming to two degrees or
not.

~~~
vkou
> I don't have a crystal ball, but I think that a major war that kills enough
> wealthy people to more than offset its own carbon cost is relatively
> unlikely during the next ten years.

A nuclear war will:

1\. Kill hundreds of millions of wealthy people.

2\. Is the most likely kind of 'real' conflict between wealthy people.

~~~
WaltPurvis
Nuclear war may or may not be the "most likely" kind of war, but it's still,
as the person you're responding to said, "relatively unlikely."

(I would say it's _very_ unlikely.)

~~~
vkou
Given how many close calls we have had, and given how there's thousands of
nuclear weapons, pointed at eachother, on hairtrigger alert, and given that a
number of countries allow themselves to use nuclear weapons in a first-strike
scenario, I strongly feel that the possibility of a nuclear war in any given
year is ~1-2%.

1\. The US and Russia are currently doing their best to antagonize eachother.

2\. The US is currently doing its best to extract itself from the tyrrany of
MAD (By building ICBM defenses.) [1] If MAD breaks down, the whole house of
cards that justifies the existence of nuclear weapons as a guarantor of peace
collapses.

3\. The Russians have an automated retaliatory-strike system - should they be
attacked, it will end the world. Hopefully, there aren't any bugs with it.
(But knowing how software projects go, of course there are bugs with it.) [2]

4\. The decision to launch, once made by either country's leadership, cannot
be second-guessed by saner subordinates.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_missile_defense_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_missile_defense_complex_in_Poland)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand)

~~~
ams6110
> possibility of a nuclear war in any given year is ~1-2%

If it were that high, we'd likely have had one by now. I think it's an order
of magnitude lower than that.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Well, nuclear weapons have been around for 74 years, and there's been either
zero or one nuclear war, depending on your definition. So ~1% and ~1‰ chance
per annum are both supported by the data; 1% is more likely if you're in the
"one" camp and 1‰ if you're in the "zero" camp.

But much more importantly, we've all been discounting the cooling effects of
nuclear winter.

------
dalbasal
Besides the obvious "save the world from destructive climate change," the
reason _I_ want renewables to overtake petrochemicals is the _I am sick of
living in a world where energy=bad_.

 _My_ mind's eye future has floating buildings, undergound beaches, offworld
tourism, subterranian transport grids and iron man suits. All that stuff
requires energy.

I don't like the "energy austerity" trend. We need _more_ energy, not less. We
just need it to be clean.

~~~
wcoenen
Even without global warming from greenhouse effects, there are limits.

Starting at current world energy use of about 5e20 joules/year, and a modest
2% yearly growth, it would take only about 500 years to get to the level of
power that the Earth receives by the sun, about 5e24 joules/year. We'd be in
trouble long before that.

Because if all that comes from renewables on Earth, there'd be no sunlight
left for the biosphere. If it comes from nuclear or offworld sources, then per
thermodynamics all that energy becomes waste heat and you have a second sun
worth of heat to deal with.

~~~
dalbasal
That's the spirit!

So... You're saying we can increase energy consumption by 20,000X before we
encounter hard engineering problems like building an offworld heat waste dump?
As far as the sun being insufficient, nuclear.

I like the moxy, but let's go for a modest 1,000X by 20x0.

~~~
wcoenen
> So... You're saying we can increase energy consumption by 20,000X before we
> encounter hard engineering problems

No, I think we would run into serious issues already at 100 times current use,
or "1% of an extra sun" worth of power.

And that's only 230 years away at 2% growth rate. Or even just 60 years at 8%
growth rate. (That's what oil growth was like before the oil shocks in the
seventies, so plausibly what would happen if we got something like cheap
fusion.)

~~~
dalbasal
Ok I'll take 100x for now. We can renegotiate later.

------
alexgmcm
Energy consumption is tightly correlated with wealth and living standards.

We should move to nuclear power and invest more in energy research like at
ITER.

The alternatives are population control or condemning swathes of the globe to
poverty - neither of which are tenable.

~~~
istjohn
The United States also needs to make real sacrifices to our standard of
living. We are by far the most prodigious users of energy per capita in the
world. During WWII we changed the way we lived in substantial ways. We should
be prepared to make similar changes. The stakes are every bit as high. And
just as in WWII, the sacrifices need to be made by the middle and upper class
as much as, if not more than, by the lower class.

~~~
trgn
We (by example, and the way we communicate) need to paint an alternative
picture that makes this alternative look, not like making a sacrifice, but is
fundamentally better.

\- I drive my car less, because my employer encourages working from home.
Don't you like working form home, get rid of that slog of a commute!

\- hey bub, your new electric car is bitching cool. Quiet, doesn't rattle,
instant powah. I want one too now.

\- yeah, I downsized to a smaller home. Still 3 bedroom, 1800sqft, enough for
my family of four. But much less space to clean. Also, heating bills are much
lower. Also, damn, I actually can furnish this home with bespoke cabinetry
instead of that disposable crap from IKEA. Badass!

\- Nah, are you nuts, I'm not flying across the world just so I can take a
selfie with other tourists taking the same selfie. I'm vacationing in driving
distance, can do without the drag of air travel, that's for losers without
inspiration anyway.

\- yeah, I'm walking to the small grocery store a couple of times a week,
instead of driving. Cost a little more, but get some exercise, plus, my food
is fresh, and get to buy meals on a whim more. Living large, daily!

A life without burning fossil fuels can be aspirational. We need to talk up
what we gain, not what we lose. And what we lose is not critical anyway. Cheap
fossil fuels just enable us to waste space because of convenience, and an
imaginery convenience at that.

~~~
moosey
Transport and home comfort are #2 and #3 in the list for your average US
citizen for production of carbon output. #1 is food, so in your list, we need
to include meat consumption as one of the sacrifices that we must make. This
is, stunningly, one of the harder ones for people to adjust to, based on
anecdotal evidence.

Changing out your car is easy, as long as you still have a personal vehicle (I
think that this logic must change too). Your house needs to be more efficient,
but that's fine as long as you have a single family home (I think that this
must change as well).

It just seems that there is a logical leap in the list of sacrifices that
people have a lot of difficulty with.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
I'm curious what your source is for this, because it isn't matched by the ones
I'm finding. The EPA[1] says that 9% of emissions come from agriculture while
28% comes from transportation with about half of that being from passenger
vehicles. Also this article[2] says that giving up a car for transportation is
higher impact than giving up meat.

[1] [https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-
emis...](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions)

[2] [https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
environment/2017/7/14/1596354...](https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
environment/2017/7/14/15963544/climate-change-individual-choices)

~~~
moosey
[http://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm](http://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm)

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/21/lifestyl...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/21/lifestyle-
change-eat-less-meat-climate-change)

There are a number of others, but many of the studies that show largely meat
free living vs. living with meat have ignored Biomass Transfer Efficiency.
Giving up meat, as a society, would reduce the amount of plant matter that we
need to grow by a huge amount, allowing large tracts of land to return to
nature, locking up carbon and reducing the amount of fertilizers that we need
to use, by a huge extent.

However, I do think that we get here just as well with a hefty carbon tax, as
we watch meat prices jump through the roof.

------
paganel
A quick glance at the chart tells me that most of the consumption increase
came from gas (seen as cleaner compared to other sources) and renewables, it
reminded me of the Jevons paradox [1]

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

~~~
Retric
Jevons paradox is less relevant with energy as you don’t want to heat your
home above a pleasant temperature for example. US per capita electricity use
has dropped over time with increasing energy efficiency.

Global population increases and economic development are the root cause for
this spike.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The temperature people set their thermostats to hasn't changed, but the volume
heated and cooled has increased dramatically and will continue to increase,
and new uses will start to become common. For example, sidewalk heating to
melt ice.

~~~
DataWorker
Unless the NIMBY’s are able to restrict new home construction. Of course that
would require limiting population growth in the US and that’s a political
problem.

~~~
saeranv
Kinda the other way around. NIMBY's prefer, and advocate for more single-
family housing which tends to consume drastically more energy (per person)
then more efficient multi-residential buildings, which they oppose.

No need to limit population growth if we were allowed to allocate population
density more intelligently.

------
titzer
We are going over the cliff with both eyes open.

~~~
vanderZwan
Most of us are not in a position of power, and a _lot_ of these issues can
only be fixed at the top-down systemic level.

So it's more like the bus is going over the cliff, and the people in the
driver's seat are refusing to change course.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Seems to be letting "us" off a little lightly. At least in the US the
passengers (or I guess the passengers sitting in half of the bus seats) voted
for the bus driver who said the problem was all a hoax.

~~~
adrianN
I know of no party anywhere in the world that has a solid plan to limit global
warming to below two degrees. Who should I vote for?

~~~
gameswithgo
pro nuclear democrats

~~~
adrianN
Building reactors takes too long and is too expensive. It's too late to go
all-in on nuclear.

~~~
jki275
compared to what?

This is alarmist thinking that's not really based in anything other than
politics and nimbyism.

If you truly believe the world is going to end because of climate change,
nuclear is literally the only path to massively decrease carbon output and
still meet the world's energy needs. Is it expensive? Of course. Is it going
to take years? Of course. But you're never going to get there with solar or
wind -- they simply cannot meet the requirements -- ever.

We stopped essentially all research and design of nuclear power plants after
TMI, solely because of nimbyism -- had we not done that, we would probably be
90+% nuclear and there would be no more coal plants.

~~~
adrianN
I'm pro nuclear. But just the construction time for a new plant is fairly
close to a decade. That doesn't include planning. I'd also assume that we
simply don't have the capacity to build thousands of reactors in a decade, for
example because the manufacturing of pressure vessels is a fairly specialized
industry.

We have about ten years to cut our emissions by at least 40% compared to 2010
and twenty more years to become completely carbon neutral. We need to invest
massively into solar, wind, and storage. We need to insulate our homes. We
need to ban cars from cities. We need immense reforestation projects. If we
have the resources to also build nuclear plants while we're doing all the
other things, great, but it can't be the option with the highest priority
because they're expensive and take forever until they're done.

~~~
titzer
It takes far, far more resources to build out wind and solar than nuclear. The
obstacles to nuclear are primarily political, regulatory, and psychological.
There actually isn't a hell of a lot of money to be made in nuclear. The real
reason that wind and solar are taking off is a successful market intervention
from governments to spur investments there and make it profitable. But make no
mistake, wind and solar are a massive ecological boondoggle. They do more
environmental damage than good, and they simply do not _displace_ fossil fuel
sources of energy, just _add_. Hell, the data is right in the first set of
charts in the article--gas is displacing everything else, but still growing
faster than coal is shrinking. This basically means that renewables are just
_additional_ build-out. Which is where people move the goalposts and talk
about how they supposedly displaced new coal or gas--which they clearly _did
not_.

No, we should have invested in nuclear power in the 1950s. We'd be probably
fine today.

Our choice now is: do we reduce the energy intensity of our economies and
completely displace all of our fossil fuels with nuclear, or do we go over the
cliff?

As I said in my OP, we're going over the cliff.

~~~
jki275
You said it significantly better than I did. Absolutely correct in almost
everything you said from my perspective.

The only caveat I would make is that I think we're farther from the cliff than
people tend to say -- that's not to say we shouldn't do things to mitigate our
impact on the environment, I absolutely believe we should, but only that I
don't see it as dire as some make it out to be.

------
mojomark
>Much more encouragingly... Natural-gas consumption in the United States
increased by 10% last year...

So, I wouldn't say that statement is absolutely encouraging since any unburned
Natural Gas releases methane (i.e. "methane slip"), which is 80-times more
potent than CO2 in terms of planetary greenhouse effects. (1)

Though, at least there's a solution: completely burn your natural gas. But is
this to much to ask of the consumer? It's not necessarily in their control. I
imagine it will take a healthy amount of regulation of gas consuming products,
but I know that every time I turn my crappy gas Kenmore (""elite"" \- don't
buy one) range, the gas runs for 3-4 seconds without burning, and my gas
heater pilot has a few second delay before the flame catches, and god only
knows how efficient these actually are burning the gas when operating.
Multiply that by several million (2), and I cringe at the prospects.

The further we go, the more attractive Nuclear becomes to me. Looking at the
plot, I think the U.S. should work (invest - even at a loss) directly with
India to establish Nuclear plants ASAP as their hunger for energy grows with
an already massive population. It's going to get ugly if we don't.

1.) [https://www.edf.org/media/new-study-finds-us-oil-and-gas-
met...](https://www.edf.org/media/new-study-finds-us-oil-and-gas-methane-
emissions-are-60-percent-higher-epa-reports-0)

2.) [https://www.statista.com/statistics/221447/gas-range-and-
ove...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/221447/gas-range-and-oven-
shipment-forecast-in-the-us-by-quarter/)

~~~
CydeWeys
We can do some simple math here to determine that it's probably not a big
deal.

What is the average length of time that your Kenmore stovetop is on? Assuming
it's, say, 15 minutes (which frankly could be short depending on what kind of
cooking you do), then it's emitting CO2 for 900 seconds with each use and
emitting methane for 3 seconds with each use. If we want to normalize that to
CO2-equivalent, then it's 900 CO2-seconds plus 3*80 CO2-seconds for the
methane -- a non-trivial amount to be sure, but still only 27% more.

Likewise, how often does your gas heater re-ignite? And are you sure that it's
releasing gas at full pressure prior to ignition? From what I remember of
mine, it releases a slow stream of gas, has a sensor to determine that the
flame has caught, and then cranks on the full stream of gas. It might be
dangerous to jump straight to full stream before verifying ignition, so you
can imagine why that might not be done. Again, assuming a typical 15 minute
load cycle here (which might be low), and a much lower pressure before the
flame catches, it's probably a negligible amount.

Overall I'm more worried about gas leaks in the distribution pipelines, as
those are everywhere and run 24/7, not just in the few seconds before a flame
catches.

~~~
mojomark
That's a good back-of-the-envelope assesment, thanks. Also, very good point
about the infrastructure leakage. I didn't know much about the issue, so I
took a quick look (1). Iagree - that persistant problem is probably a much
bigger issue than intermittent end-use leakage.

My basic point was simply that the U.S. using more natural gas isn't
necessarily "great news".

------
holri
This is probably because of higher energy efficiency:

[https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/bedazzled-by-
energ...](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/bedazzled-by-energy-
efficiency.html)

~~~
black-tea
Higher efficiency would lead to lower consumption.

~~~
bottled_poe
You might think so, but...
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

~~~
ksec
Thanks. Do you know if there are a list of these paradox or counter intuitive
theory?

~~~
js8
Wikipedia?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes)

------
userbinator
I wonder how much of this was due to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency
mining...

~~~
kbody
[ Probably bad calcs below: ]

From the article 2018 saw an increase of 300 million tonnes of oil equivalent
of primary global energy demand.

Which is[1] equal to 3489 TWh.

Taking the worst case from one of the most inaccurate reports about bitcoin's
estimated power consumption (which is also the highest estimate I've found) is
61.4 TWh annually.

So the total power consumption of bitcoin seems to be the ~1.7% of 2018's
total _increase_ on the global power demand.

Take it with a grain of salt, I most probably I have something wrong.

[1]: [https://www.unitjuggler.com/convert-energy-from-toe-to-
MWh.h...](https://www.unitjuggler.com/convert-energy-from-toe-to-
MWh.html?val=300000000)

------
keymone
progress towards type 1 civilization is good.

~~~
mac01021
Maybe, but this is not that.

------
lightedman
Shut down Bitcoin and regain all that lost solar capacity. Seriously, Bitcoin
now eats more more power than all the PV on the planet can produce.

