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All U.S. Energy Consumption in a Giant Diagram

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All U.S. Energy Consumption in a Big Diagram

All U.S. Energy Consumption in a Giant Diagram

Today’s graphic is special type of flow chart, called a Sankey diagram.

This particular one shows the total estimated energy consumption in the United States in 2015, and how energy flowed from source to the final destination. The graphic comes to us from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.

The beauty of a Sankey is in its simplicity and and effectiveness. No information is left out, and we can really see the full energy picture from a 10,000 foot view.

Wasted Effort

The U.S. is estimated to have consumed 97.5 quads of energy in 2015.

What’s a quad? It’s equal to a quadrillion BTUs, which is roughly comparable to any of these:

  • 8,007,000,000 gallons (US) of gasoline
  • 293,071,000,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh)
  • 36,000,000 tonnes of coal
  • 970,434,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas
  • 25,200,000 tonnes of oil
  • 252,000,000 tonnes of TNT
  • 13.3 tonnes of uranium-235

It’s a lot of energy – and if you look at the diagram, you’ll see most of it is actually wasted.

It’s estimated that 59.1 quads (60.6% of all energy) is “rejected energy”, a fancy term for energy that is produced but not used in an effective way. For example, when gasoline is burned in a car, most of the energy comes off as heat instead of doing productive work (ie. turning the crank shaft). The average internal combustion engine is only 20% efficient, and people get excited even when they approach 40% efficiency.

While gas engines are horribly inefficient, so are other energy sources. If you look at electricity production on the diagram, you’ll see that 67% of all energy going to generate electricity is wasted.

It’s the laws of physics, but there are still many areas for improvement to increase this efficiency.

A Long Way to Go for Green Energy

As we explained in Part 2 of our Battery Series, there are still some big obstacles to overcome for green energy, batteries, and energy storage.

By looking at all energy use (including non-electrical energy used in automobiles, industrial, etc.), this diagram helps put things in even more perspective. To make a big impact, green energy not only has to make inroads in electrical generation, but it also has to supplant the 25.4 quads of energy being used in the automotive sector. This is why projects like the massive Tesla Gigafactory 1 are such a big deal. If Elon Musk is successful in his mission, the whole diagram and our energy mix would change dramatically.

For now, however, green is still a blip on the radar. Looking at total energy consumption in 2015, solar only accounted for 0.53 quads of energy. Meanwhile, wind accounted for 1.82 quads.

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Energy

How Much Does the U.S. Depend on Russian Uranium?

Currently, Russia is the largest foreign supplier of nuclear power fuel to the U.S.

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Voronoi graphic visualizing U.S. reliance on Russian uranium

How Much Does the U.S. Depend on Russian Uranium?

This was originally posted on Elements. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on natural resource megatrends in your email.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a ban on imports of Russian uranium. The bill must pass the Senate before becoming law.

In this graphic, we visualize how much the U.S. relies on Russian uranium, based on data from the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA).

U.S. Suppliers of Enriched Uranium

After Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian-produced oil and gas—yet Russian-enriched uranium is still being imported.

Currently, Russia is the largest foreign supplier of nuclear power fuel to the United States. In 2022, Russia supplied almost a quarter of the enriched uranium used to fuel America’s fleet of more than 90 commercial reactors.

Country of enrichment serviceSWU%
🇺🇸 United States3,87627.34%
🇷🇺 Russia3,40924.04%
🇩🇪 Germany1,76312.40%
🇬🇧 United Kingdom1,59311.23%
🇳🇱 Netherlands1,3039.20%
Other2,23215.79%
Total14,176100%

SWU stands for “Separative Work Unit” in the uranium industry. It is a measure of the amount of work required to separate isotopes of uranium during the enrichment process. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Most of the remaining uranium is imported from European countries, while another portion is produced by a British-Dutch-German consortium operating in the United States called Urenco.

Similarly, nearly a dozen countries around the world depend on Russia for more than half of their enriched uranium—and many of them are NATO-allied members and allies of Ukraine.

In 2023 alone, the U.S. nuclear industry paid over $800 million to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation, Rosatom, and its fuel subsidiaries.

It is important to note that 19% of electricity in the U.S. is powered by nuclear plants.

The dependency on Russian fuels dates back to the 1990s when the United States turned away from its own enrichment capabilities in favor of using down-blended stocks of Soviet-era weapons-grade uranium.

As part of the new uranium-ban bill, the Biden administration plans to allocate $2.2 billion for the expansion of uranium enrichment facilities in the United States.

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