Current U.S. Energy Picture
Climate-friendly Energy Policy: Options for the Near Term
Current U.S. Energy Picture
The United States supplies about three-quarters of its energy needs from domestic sources. The nation has ample sources of coal and, indeed, is a modest coal exporter. The United States also supplies about 84 percent of its own natural gas; imports, mostly from Canada, account for about 16 percent of U.S. natural gas consumption.10 Oil presents a very different picture, however. The United States imported about 55 percent of the petroleum it consumed in 2001, and imports are projected to increase.11
The United States consumes a tremendous amount of energy each year, at considerable expense. In 2001, it consumed about 97 quadrillion British Thermal Units (or “quads”) of energy, at a cost of nearly $700 billion.12 Figure 1 indicates end uses of energy by sector, with the primary energy13 used for electricity generation allocated to each sector in proportion to its electricity consumption.
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The bulk of U.S. primary energy comes from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels provided 86 percent of U.S. primary energy in 2001.14 (See Figure 2.) Non-fossil sources provided the remaining 14 percent, of which nuclear energy represented approximately 8 percent and renewable energy resources accounted for approximately 6 percent (about 40 percent of the renewable energy is hydropower). The amount of energy provided by nuclear sources is expected to increase slightly over the next few decades, but DOE does not anticipate any new nuclear facilities being built in the United States during that period.15 Hydropower output is expected to be static. Other renewable sources (biomass, wood, municipal solid waste, ethanol, geothermal, wind, and solar) now supply only 3.4 percent of total U.S. energy consumption and only 2.1 percent of total U.S. electricity generation.16 DOE projects slow growth for non-hydro renewables because of the relatively lower costs of fossil fuels for electricity generation, and because less capital-intensive natural gas technologies have an advantage in competitive electricity markets over coal and baseload renewables for new capacity.17
