The average American uses less energy than in 1973

[cthulu2016]

I wish I could pull out this chart, but it's in a pdf. (first chart)

http://epb.lbl.gov/homepages/rick_diamond/LBNL55011-trends.pdf

Anyway, energy consumption per capita in the US goes up until 1973 then flatlines/declines up to today. (Our total national consumption increases because there are more people, though each one is using less than 1973 amounts of energy.)

So conservation really works. Insulation and mandated gas efficiency and all of those things that started in response to the early 1970s oil shocks have had the effect of capping per capita consumption even with houses became bigger, everything being electric, cars the size of trucks being the suburban norm, etc.

(Figure 5 shows vehicle gas consumption and it's impressive -- big drop off beginning in 1973)

[Skinner]

1. That surprises me.

I would have thought today with bigger houses and more cars and more wealth and more stuff overall that we are using more energy per capita.

Just skimmed the PDF. Lots of interesting graphs in there. Thanks for posting.

[cthulu2016]

2. I was googling around because

I was curious how higher gas prices work out in gas spending per capita, since our vehicles are more fuel efficient, or supposed to be (didn't find that particular chart).

I agree with you that it's counter-intuitive, but a modern SUV may well get more MPG than a 1970s sedan. (Probably weighs less, for starters)

Anyway, hooray for those "dumb" regulations. It is hard for a builder to add a bunch of insulation because it's hard to pass on to customers as perceived value. Same with fuel efficiency... the consumer is rlatively unlikely to pay up front for long-term efficiency.

Regulation works for things where no individual business wants to go first but it would be okay of they all have to do it.

[izquierdista]

10. Really?

You don't remember having to fuel up one of these, do you?

[Skinner]

11. My first car was one of these.

[FredStembottom]

17. These were great.... until....

... the Minnesota road salt ate through the parts of the uni-body that held the front wheels on! We were all dashing to get that fixed ASAP. Honda did, indeed fix about elevnty-gazillion of these for that problem.

[Mopar151]

19. I had a '78

460 4 barrel, 3" longer than a pickup truck, 14 MPG was a day to celebrate, 8 MPG was not unusual

[Odin2005]

12. Things have gotten a LOT more energy efficient since the 70s.

[TheWraith]

14. Actually, I'm not surprised at all.

Yes, there's a lot more stuff, including a lot more high tech gadgets. However, most high tech gadgets aren't nearly as power hungry as people might thing.

For instance, an average laptop computer will draw less electricity than an old 100 watt lightbulb. All the cell phones for a family of 4 would probably draw half that much. Microwaves are very energy intensive, usually these days running around 1000 watts--but only for minutes at a time. Microwaving some leftovers for 3 minutes at that power eats ~65 watt-hours of electricity. Compare that to, say, heating up a 4000 watt electric oven for 20 minutes, which is ~1500 watt-hours.

Cars meanwhile have gradually gotten more energy-efficient. Same for home heating, along with people adjusting their expectations down, say setting the thermostat at 65 in the winter instead of 72.

[bhikkhu]

3. Its been pretty stable since 1970

Which is ok, I guess. We do a lot more with that energy (efficiency has increased), but we do a lot more without using a lot more. Which is good.

[cthulu2016]

4. The Arab oil embargo appears to have been decisive

The embargo (in response to our siding with Israel in the Yom Kippur war) changed how we thought about energy, and it's interesting to see that altered mind-set stay in place, which would not have been the case without regulation.

[LiberalEsto]

5. Sitting in gas lines for hours

and only being able to refuel on alternate days
and (in my case) having to push my car, which was completely out of gas, the last 15 feet to the gas pump with help from others

leaves an indelible impression on one.

[joshcryer]

8. It's not just that, but we were expanding our infrasturcture during that time period.

Once everyone had electricity, running water, stuff like that, there was no more need to ramp up production significantly, and efficiency improvements tended to wash out any need for more energy.

[joshcryer]

7. We've hit peak development (whether people like this or not).

Energy use will only go down per capita as efficiency improves. This gets me in trouble because from a global perspective I don't pity so much American income disparity. We're better off than most of the planet, and we manage to do so by exploiting global labor and resources. I am not trying to diminish the poverty that many American's undergo (my mom is in the bottom 5%, and that's with her sons helping her), it can be really really bad for certain people. I'm just sayin', have some perspective. I'm not much of a nationalist.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

6. Makes sense to me... back then all there was only tube type T.V's and EnergyStar wasn't

around until 1992. Not only picture tube, but also the vacuum tubes inside the T.V.'s. consumed a lot of energy.

Also all the refrigerator and freezers at the time used a lot of energy.

[cthulu2016]

9. Microwaves are probably pretty efficient

[Odin2005]

13. This proves a key claim of the anti-growth luddites wrong.

The claim being that economic growth is the same as using more energy.

[Spider Jerusalem]

23. Not necessarily, you do reach a point of greater efficiency...

but total energy use is still much greater than in 1973 because the US population has increased by 100 million and the global population by about three billion.

[Odin2005]

26. DOH, I forgot about population growth!

[FredStembottom]

15. We haevn't even taken the savings from CFC's and LED's....

... into account in statistics, yet!

I am convinced that as these bulbs proliferate, it will be jaw. dropping.

One of the most eye-opening things I ever did was one day when I took my boys to the local science museum.

They had a fairly simple set-up that let you point a sensor at an incandescent light bulb and see the full range of energy it was emitting as a colored spectral graph. The actual visible light was a tiny, almost laughable part of the entire spectrum. Maybe 15% of the total emissions. The rest was pure waste (mostly heat).

Then, you could aim it at a compact flourescent bulb - with the visible light part of the graph now taking up someting like 86% of the graph.

LED's go even further.

The spread of these bulbs is going to put so much nonsense to bed forever. it will make us all wonder if an active cover-up of the extant of the possible savings has been in place for 30 years or more.

[quakerboy]

18. I have some concerns about that

On the one hand, if you convert all your lights over in a month, you can literally watch the power used in your home drop like a stone.

On the other, I notice that, particularly with the LED bulbs coming in now, they all seem to have massive heat sinks. Which tells me their design is still turning a lot of energy into heat. Even the CFL's seem to generate a lot of heat in the base area.

I would guess that if we made lighting power systems specifically for LED's instead of sticking LED's in the mold of our normal sockets, we could probably get even more significant reductions in lighting energy costs.

But then the bulbs wouldn't work for older/existing homes without a refit. And that wouldn't be convenient. So I doubt it will happen to any great degree.

[FredStembottom]

20. In the case of CFL's

.. they still put out heat. But it's only a small percentage of what it radiates. Visible light is something like 86% of what it radiates.

That's why an 11 watt CFL can light up an area just as bright as a 60 watt incandescent bulb. It's just as bright with 49 watts less energy used. (The incandesent was using the extra 49 watts to produce invisible stuff: heat, ultra-violet light, infra-red light, even some radio waves.)

LED's go further than that.

I have noticed that new breed of super-bright LED's that get hot and don't know how they stack up, yet.

[quakerboy]

21. I am not disagreeing

LED's and CFL's seem an obvious improvement over incandescent. When we switched my whole apartment over some years back, the power bill immediately dropped massively.

But my question is can we take that 11 watt CFL or its 8 watt LED equivalent and make them even lower consumption? I am not educated enough in electrical engineering to answer my own question. But it seems likely to me that if you created a power system with lower volts or lower amps coming out of the fuse box, you could make LED or CFL bulbs that created less heat to convert that energy to light, and were thus even more efficient. The problem would be you could not just pop an old incandescent in and expect it to work normally.

Assuming that the my assumptions based on an admittedly crude understanding of electricity are correct, It could lead to a nice bump in construction as people like new things that save them money and help the earth, and retrofitted their homes. Plus as heat seems to be the main killer of electronics, it would probably mean even longer lasting bulbs. On the other hand, it would be a pain. you would have to check your light bulb purchases much more carefully to make sure you were getting the right type. And the same for all the fixtures, I assume.

[FredStembottom]

22. I see.

You are talking about taking the transformer (the part that converts 120V house power down to battery power - or up for some things) out of the equation. But I don't think the heat comes from the bulbs being hooked up to power that is too strong. Even if you power up a CFL with a battery, fr'instance, it will still make the same amount of heat as an inherent part of getting light to emit.

I'll have to think about it. For one thing, flourescent lighting requires gi-normous increases in voltage from house power to get the "lightning bolt" inside the white tube to jump the gap thus vaporizing the mercury in there to emit light (as I understand it in my half-baked, layman's way).

[quakerboy]

25. Interesting

my main focus is actually the LED's, and CFL is just a secondary to my thought process. I was unaware of the increase in voltage required.

I guess, my thought process started with flashlights. For instance, I have an LED flashlight that is as bright as the headlight to my car. It lights my whole living room at least as well as the 4 CFL bulbs we have overhead. And yet it produces next to no heat.

As I recall, I had an energizer flashlight some years ago that had a small CFL bulb in the handle to make a lantern effect. And that ran off of batteries and produced no apparent heat either.

Based on those practical examples, my assumption was that the heat created in the LED and CFL bulbs bases was from power conversion of some sort. I would have guessed the issue is in the amps, not the volts.

[FarCenter]

24. You can wire for 12 V DC for LEDs.

This concentrates the electronics to a single, larger, more efficient power supply, reduces the size of the wires (saving copper), and increases safety (no fires from poor insulation/connections).

[appleannie1]

27. Many people keep their thermostats lower and homes today are built with insulation and thermal

windows etc.