This Very, Very Detailed Chart Shows How All The Energy In The U.S. Is Used
Fastcoexist.com ADELE PETERS 08.09.16
Saul Griffith likes numbers. The serial entrepreneur and MacArthur genius once calculated the carbon footprint of every single action in his life—from buying underwear to paying taxes. Now he and a group of colleagues at Otherlab, his San Francisco-based company, have mapped out something else in obsessive detail: all of the energy used in America.
"I think we may be the first three or four people to read every footnote in every energy agency document ever produced," Griffith said at a recent talk when he presented the new flowchart—which is still in a somewhat rough iteration—at an event run by Reinvent, a company that brings innovators together to talk about how to reshape the world.
http://energyliteracy.com
The data is pulled from sources like the Department of Energy and the census. "This is really the first time that all of this data is brought together in one flow diagram, which is important if you really want to understand the consequences through the whole economy of things like defense," he says.
The left side shows where we get energy—solar, though growing, is still less than 1% of energy production. Most electricity comes from coal. For each source, it's possible to see how much is lost as waste at the other end; nearly half of the energy from natural gas, for example, ends up wasted.
By clicking through the chart, you can see exactly how much energy is used for every activity. Moving newspapers around uses a tenth of a percent of our total energy pie; driving trash to landfills takes about twice as much...snip
Read More: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3062630/visualizing/this-very-very-detailed-chart-shows-how-all-the-energy-in-the-us-is-used
In 2016-Most electricity comes from coal.
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Marking this for a more in depth examination later tonight!
