Electricity ≠ Primary Energy

In some recent polling, I found that most students think that about half of all their primary energy needs are delivered through electricity.

This is WAY off. In the United States, only about 18% of all our end-use energy comes from electricity. In the world, as per OurWorldInData.org, it is 19% and in the “electrify everything” EU-27 it is a whopping 21%. My native Holland is only at 14%.

It is not very surprising that people are so far off. First, sloppy media reporting often equates primary energy with electricity. Ignoring other major uses of energy makes the renewable share look bigger, showing more apparent progress and growth.

But the renewable share of the primary energy pie remains tiny. Despite $trillions in taxpayer handouts, often at ridiculous multiples of the market cost of carbon, wind and solar represent less than 3% of the energy end-use pie. Renewables simply do not have the versatility of fossil fuels to contribute to other end-uses beyond electricity.

Secondly, a source of confusion is that electricity barely contributes to the two biggest end-use sectors that we tend to forget when we think about our “domestic” energy use: almost nothing to transportation and a fraction (13%) to industrial use. Our residential and commercial use are simply more visible to us as energy we consume. And indeed, for residential and commercial, electricity represents about half of our use, while the other roughly half is natural gas.

To summarize in the graph below, here is a simple stupid split in end use for all our US energy needs. About a third of our energy end use is for transportation; another third for industrial use to make “stuff”; and, the final third for commercial and residential use, roughly split in sixths between natural gas heating and electricity.

Electricity is a secondary energy source that comes mostly from natural gas. Beyond that, it should now be clear that Electricity ≠ Primary Energy.