Fossil Fuels, Renewable Energy, and the United States
By Hayden Beck
Electricity is a commodity upon which the world, as we know it, stands. Without it the pillars of society would crumble to the earth, the economy would die painfully in the mud, and the world’s governments would collapse with such force that humanity would wither away and cease to exist. The modern world is built around many forms of technology, the least of which runs on some form of electricity. Aside from shovels, saws, and hammers, nearly every facet of human existence is perpetuated by power. From transportation to the internet, one way or another, the technology upon which we humans rely will almost always harness the power of electricity.
But that begs the question, where does electricity come from? The answer to this question is both simple and complex. It is simple in that there are several primary methods of electricity generation, but this analysis will only focus on those that fall into the following categories: Renewable sources, Nuclear sources, and Oil, Gas and Coal sources. You might be asking yourself, “That seems fairly simple, how is this a complex situation?” Therein lies the motivation behind this analysis. Given the impact the generation of electricity has had on humans and the environment we find ourselves in, many people have begun questioning the healthfulness of the methods of certain methods of electricity generation. These questions have since evolved into deep criticisms of certain forms of electricity generation, such as the burning of oil, gas and coal for power, which is widely known to pump greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere exacerbating the effects of climate change. Other people criticize nuclear power because of the inherent risks associated with splitting atoms. These issues have brought about a movement to heighten our levels of renewable energy production. This means energy that is both safe for the environment and comparable in effectiveness to the aforementioned methods. In this analysis, I shall be exploring the degree to which the United States of America relies on the different forms of energy production mentioned above and how those reliences have changed over time.
My analysis began with collecting data from the World Bank Databank, which contains a variety of statistics about a variety of things from countries around the world. For the purpose of this analysis, I focused only on the total percentage of electricity generated from the three different series listed above: renewable, nuclear, and oil, gas and coal. With that said, I looked at a range of years, starting in 1990 and ending in 2015. This is because this was the only range of dates in which all three series of data contained information. It is not a guarantee that the World Bank Databank contains data about each of the different types of energy generation outside of the range I analyzed. Given the United States is the country in which I reside, I decided to frame my analysis around data collected only from the USA. Below is a graph of the results of my analysis, where pink is renewable, red is nuclear, and maroon is oil, gas and coal.
At any given point over the 25 year range, oil, gas and coal accounted for more that 67.07% of all energy production. At its lowest, in 2015, oil, gas and coal accounted for only 67.07% of the total while renewable energy production peaked that very same year with 13.22%. The shape of the graph indicates that in recent years, renewable energy has been increasing while electricity generated by oil, gas and coal has been decreasing. Renewable energy production was at its lowest in 2001 with a mere 6.7%. Interestingly, that same year, oil, gas and coal energy production was at its highest accounting for 72.2% of the total energy produced. This made me wonder, is the amount of renewable energy produced an accurate predictor of oil, gas and coal energy production? By running a linear regression, I was able to determine that the amount of renewable energy produced in a year is an accurate predictor of the amount of oil, gas and coal energy produced in a year (R^2=0.97). All the while, nuclear energy seems to be maintaining a steady level of energy production with no significant peaks or valleys.
Overall, it is nice to see that reliance on oil, gas and coal appears to be decreasing slightly. When healthier and similarly effective techniques of energy production are available, it is difficult to understand why archaic forms of production are still in use. Climate change is a real and rapidly worsening problem faced by all humans across the world. Stifling the amount of greenhouse gasses escaping into our atmosphere is not just a potential solution, it is the only way to move forward successfully as a species. Humanity’s dependence on electricity will likely continue until our extinction, but we need not move hastily toward that inevitability. Renewable energy offers clean energy without hurting the environment in any significant way. It is my hope that the United States continues to lessen its use of oil, gas and coal and explore alternative energy options such as nuclear or renewable energy.
