The article has a great flow chart in it that highlights rejected energy and energy services and where the rejected energy comes from. energy here spans the spectrum of electricity generation, heating, industrial usage, transport, etc.
Basically more than two thirds of the energy is lost to heat, friction, noise, transmission losses, etc. Most of the losses are coal, gas, and oil.
Important to note that the image is for 2018. So, things have shifted a bit in favor of wind and solar since then. There's an updated chart for this: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-09/E...
A few nice insights from the two versions of this graph:
- Wind and solar grew a lot.
- Nuclear declined.
- Gas grew a little.
- Coal declined a lot. Oil usage is up.
- Overall energy production went down, usable energy went down, rejected energy actually went up. So a little bit of extra oil and gas usage resulted in more rejected energy for less usable energy.
- fossil fuel usage is dominant for transport. But most of that is rejected energy. Going electric is going to make a massive difference as we'll be able to do more with less.
- Industrial usage of energy is a bit more efficient. A reason for that is a lot of it is heating. So heat is the intended output rather than wasted.
- Renewables are a small portion of the inputs but a large part of the usable output because of the efficiencies. And it grew a lot in just 3 years.
- We don't have to replace most of the inputs if we replace them with more efficient ones. A lot of people ge their back of the envelope math wrong and consider only the energy input and not the output. If you replace something with 40% efficiency with something that is 80% efficient, you can do with 2x less.
Great visualization. Worth studying if you want to understand the energy market at a glance.
Nuclear has a useful role to play. But it is in decline. And that decline is cost driven. Coal is tanking hard for the same reason. Yes coal is dirty and nuclear isn't. But they are both too expensive.