Talk:World energy consumption/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

SI UNITS

If SI units are declared then it is improper to use greek language terms such as Exo, peta etc to describe the figures. SI units means all figures must be given using exponential terms using 3 significant figures, or if greater accuracy is required 5 or 7 SF. Alternating between this system and the greek method is confusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.130.175.129 (talk) 12:35, 29 May 2008 (UTC) Agreed on the exponential format, but the number of significant figures should be that justified by the precision of the data, not arbitrary odd numbers. I will start editing out the obscure YJ and ZJ first. BG23 (talk) 22:22, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and even most scientists and engineers rarely use Yotta and Zetta prefixes. For the purposes of a general purpose encylopedia, I propose capping them at tera, peta, or exa and if we have to have a lot of zeroes, so be it. I think it will make the article more understandable to the average reader, if a bit messier. --Rajah (talk) 06:08, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

actually, I'd like to amend this by saying that we should scientific notation exclusively and get rid of all the Yotta, Zettas and Etas. --Rajah (talk) 05:41, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup

This is an important "database" of information and seems to need a bit of a clean up. For instance, there are comments relating to solar energy (available solar energy) that are at variance. The intro shows incident solar radiation (total NOT necessarily available for use)as 1.740×10¹⁷ W (or 5.49x10²⁴ joules per annum, whereas later the claim is that the AVAILABle solar energy is 3.8x10²⁴ joules. There are obviously margins of error but it would be good if the facts used were coordinated in some way.

LookingGlass (talk) 17:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Little or No Info on CONSUMPTION

While covering production in great detail, this article barely touches the subject of energy consumption.

It would be very useful to know the breakdown of global energy use by:

• Transportation
• Buildings (further broken down by Heating/Cooling, Lighting, Appliances, etc.)
• Industry (broken down by industry)
• Transmission & Distribution (energy lost in transmission and distribution)

I would also be helpful to know the percentage conversion of energy rich substances (wood, oil, sawdust, paper pulp) into items that don't release the energy (carbon sinks):

• Plastics
• Particle Board
• Wood products and buildings —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.27.92.134 (talk) 19:16, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Can anyone help with this?

LookingGlass (talk) 17:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

some problems with resources : nuclear fission

Reference 46 talks about a scenario where the resource could last 85 years and be extended to 2500 years with breeding. Nowhere does the article in question talk about 2500 ZJ.

It is also conflicting with reference 47 where the IPCC talks about 17 ZJ from a recoverable resource base of 29 Mt but the article there talks about only 1000 ZJ with reprocessing and breeding. This latter 17 ZJ to 1000 ZJ referrence corresponds well to the common 60 times magnification figure given by nuclear breeding. The 85 year to 2500 year figure corresponds to the (ref 46) article's own reference to reactor designs being tested able to extract 30 times more energy.

In either case, the paragraph contains self conflicting data and should be changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.231.184.189 (talk) 20:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Tidal Energy Claim

As a new WP editor, I already know that I am conflicted on introducing anything from www.gewp.org into this article. Could another editor take a look at the calculations on that webpage and see if there is anything significant to reference here? Nukeh (talk) 23:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree with your request for references to confirm the (in)accuracy of the estimates on available tidal energy I put in the article. So I added some fact requests to the article. I put these estimates there, because the source of tidal energy and the resulting estimate on available tidal energy resources, which were given beforehand, were not correct.

The source of the energy in the ocean tides is the Earth's rotation. The oscillating tidal forcing by the Moon and Sun (at fixed locations on Earth) results in a resonant response of the water in the ocean basins, influenced by their shape and bathymetry. Since the resonant amplification is influenced strongly by the amount of dissipation, I estimated that an additional dissipation of 20% by tidal energy production would not change the global tides too much. Of course tidal power plants may have a large effect on the local tides, of which the consequences have to be taken into account when designing such devices. Crowsnest (talk) 09:01, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry - We have a misunderstanding. I was not questioning anything in the article. What I would like to do is add a statement: Preliminary calculations show that well distributed buoyant vessels (totaling approximately 200 x 200 miles x 10 feet in displacement volume) tethered to the ocean floor have been proposed as a potential energy source for the generation of 10¹⁴ W of electricity from tidal / wave energy. Two confirming calculations are now on www.gewp.org, but I am the author and inventor, thus I am conflicted for WP. If you feel confortable about these calculations, perhaps you could reference this new information into the main article in your own words. Alternatively, we could work on a better summary of this finding here on Talk, and then another editor or you could make the appropriate entry into the main article. I have been unable to Google any work that is similar, except for bottom-based pistons. Thanks.Nukeh (talk) 13:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you take a look at wave power: the Archimedes Wave Swing (AWS) also extracts energy from vertical motion from submerged gas-filled buoys. They extensively studied the possible power generation of such heaving devices. Crowsnest (talk) 13:34, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, great reference; I ended up here: http://www.awsocean.com/technology.html Nukeh (talk) 17:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I am conflicted, but if all we can do in this article is to cite a single page in Tester et al: "Waves are derived from wind, which is in turn derived from solar energy, and at each conversion there is a drop of about two orders of magnitude in available energy. The energy fluxes of waves that wash against our shores add up to 3 TW. [54]" ... we are misleading readers by omission of referencing the energy held in ocean waves at some distance from shore. Can another editor fix this? 100TWdoug (talk) 01:26, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Biomass

It is pretty sad to see all the effort being put into biofuel, as a solution to global warming, when it does nothing to help with global warming. Think about it - if you cut down a tree and make it into furniture you are helping global warming (provided you replace the tree with a new one) - if you burn it you are putting the same CO2 into the air as if you were burning coal or oil. The solution to global warming is to stop putting CO2 into the air, not to change where you get the Carbon from. 199.125.109.36 (talk) 17:23, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect. Yes, when you burn a tree it releases carbon dioxide. However, if you replace the tree with a new one it removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it grows, fixing the carbon and releasing oxygen. Provided you actually do replace the biomass you harvest, the amount of carbon dioxide released by burning or rotting will remain in equilibrium with the amount absorbed by growth of new biomass. Thus, the only way biomass will contribute to global warming is through deforestation or other failure to replace harvested biomass with new growth. The biomass page contains some references for this. I'm undoing your edit to the main page.--Squirmymcphee (talk) 18:22, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

You are making a big mistake. Here is what it says on the biomass page: "Though biomass is a renewable fuel, and is sometimes called a "carbon neutral" fuel, its use can still contribute to global warming." So far so good. However the following is oversimplified: "This happens when the natural carbon equilibrium is disturbed; for example by deforestation or urbanization of green sites." What it should say is "this happens when more carbon is cycled through the atmosphere than would be in the natural cycle". 199.125.109.37 (talk) 22:41, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Your reference states that changes in land use patterns may be responsible for additional carbon emissions due to biomass, but I can't see how it says that it is "not a solution to global warming," as you have written in the main article. I can see how it says that changes in land use patterns might cause it to increase greenhouse gas emissions, and I can even see that it claims (or, more accurately, that the studies it is reporting on claim) that these changes in land use patterns are what has been observed in reality thus far. I can't see anywhere that your reference claims biomass cannot be a solution to global warming, however.--Squirmymcphee (talk) 01:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The headline "Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat" doesn't give you a clue? There are many other references that say the same thing. The studies in Science are just the two most important. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that burning carbon isn't a mechanism for reducing greenhouse gases. 199.125.109.37 (talk) 03:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Are you seriously suggesting that I should get my science from inflammatory newspaper headlines? No thanks, that's a prime reason for the scientific illiteracy in the world today. Did you read the actual article in the New York Times? More importantly, did you read the studies published in Science? Niether of them says that biofuels are "not a solution to global warming" as you assert they do.

The article by Farigone, et al. says, "Biofuels are a potential low-carbon energy source, but whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced." See, right there in one sentence the study's authors explicitly contradict you. It goes on to say, "biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials incur little or no carbon debt and can offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages." Both of these statements are right in the abstract, so you don't even need to have a subscription or make a trip to the library to read them. In the body of the article the authors state, "If biofuels are to help mitigate global climate change, our results suggest that they need to be produced with little reduction of the storehouses of organic carbon in the soils and vegetation of natural and managed ecosystems." That not only is a far cry from your statement that biofuels are "not a solution to global warming," it is essentially what I told you above -- that with proper management, biofuels are carbon-neutral.

The other article, by Searchinger, et al., starts off by acknowledging, "Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock." It goes on to say that "because growing biofuel feedstocks removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, biofuels can in theory reduce GHGs relative to fossil fuels.... [T]o generate greenhouse benefits, the carbon generated on land to displace fossil fuels ... must exceed the carbon storage and sequestration given up directly or indirectly by changing land uses." In other words, it is most certainly possible for biofuels to have global warming benefits, but whether they actually do depends on how they are grown.

So I ask you again, where in these studies do you see the claim that biofuels are "not a solution to global warming"? The scientists who performed these studies are not only not making that claim, they are mapping out the agricultural practices that must be adopted so biofuels can be a solution to global warming.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that headlines are designed to sell papers, not communicate sound scientific ideas.--Squirmymcphee (talk) 18:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I know that this is hotly debated, and moreover that I´m not an expert, I ask you not to view my comments as some form of an attack, they´re simply reflect something I have been thinking about for some time, and have for some time had a mind to ask about, where experts in the field may grant an answer. This is about environmental effects of the kind of extensive growing, that it appears to me will be needed to make biofuels into an important source of fuel for mankind. The way I understand it, growing for biofuel would resemble somewhat industrialized growing for factories that make paper, i.e. organized on a large scale, replanting replacing wood cut to feed the factories, this all requiring extensive amount of land for the cultivated forest. In Sweden, to name an example, they´re actually thinking to use wood from their very extensive cultivated forests to make biofuel, experiments to that effect in process. In Brazil, sugar cane is used in similar fashion on an industrial scale. In USA, corn is being used in similar fashion. Elsewhere, other crops or plants that are perceived to have an useful potential, i.e. being quick growing, that do not need much fertilizer assistance for growing, that can use relatively poor quality land, are being considered for such large scale industrial cultivation.

My point is about the other environmental effects due to the extreme, it appears to me, land-use requirement that will called for if biofuels are to substantially replace fossil fuel. Already, cultivated land is exerting quite a lot of pressure on natural habitats. What it looks to me, is that in order to substantially replace fossil fuel with grown biofuel, at the very least the amount of cultivated land which is in current use, planetvide that is, would have to be added for cultivation to the amount which already is under cultivation, planetvide...possibly this is an underestimate. I´m wondering if these, other environmental effects can be acceptable, cost?

There is also, that I reckon that by increasing demand for cultivation, a similar thing would happen, as with the cost of oil when demand grows more rapidly than growth in supply, that price of cultivated land will increase. Now, admittedly relatively marginal land will be relatively cheap, even so other factors will have to be considered. As, the requirement is industrial scale, the land being used needs to be close enough to transportation networks to be economical, moreover it needs to be reasonably transverseable for large cutting or harvesting machines for its use for industrial scale harvesting to be practical. In addition, there are factors like distance from markets, and so on. This puts a limit to which marginal peripheral lands can actually be used, or it´s reasonable to expect will be used. Naturally, what exactly is the scale we are talking about, is pretty darn important. In other words, to what degree is the idea to replase fossilfuels with biofuels. It has been mentioned, as a prove, that sugarcane cultivation in Brazil has not caused land prises to increase to any massive degree. It needs to be considered, that Basil is a large country, IMO the case with Brazil is that due to it being large it has unusual large amount of peripheral land thus as a result it´s possible to grow massive amount of sugar cane without causing massive price increases of cultivated land in Brazil. Now, if sugar cane growing in Brazil were to be say increased by another factor of 2 or 3 or 4. My point is, it´s only a matter of time till land demand will encounter supply difficulties and price increases of land do ensue. This does though indicate that Basil may be able to maybe grow enough sugarcane for its own use, but that´s not going to save the planet IMO.

Now, it ought to be clear that effects of price increases of land, will be increased prices of food beyond what´s already the case, possibly massive. In addition, we need to factor in that massive increase of demand for farm labourers will increase prices of farm labour. Farmers, themselves will be in massively increased demand, which also will make their expertise more pricey, etc.

OK, so my final question to the experts in the field, do they think that it´s possible to substantially replace fossil fuel with biofuel, without these apparent to me pitfalls, i.e. massive increase in pressure on wildlife, massive decrease in amount of uncultivated land available for wildlife, massive price-increases of cultivated land, massive price-increases of food, massive increase in cost of farm labour and farming expertise, etc.

So, in effect I´m not disputing the findings that indicate that biofuel is in theory an effective replacement for fossil fuel. What I´m pointing out, is that in practice the side effects shall make the overall cost of the venture, i.e. environmental and increses of food prices, to high to make biofuel growing at such enormous scales, acceptable. Don´t take that as an assertion, I´m essentially challenging you with this statement to dispute it, and make good arguments towards the effect that I´m wrong. I won´t mind it at all to be wrong, if you can make good arguments to that effect. Regards, Einar Bjorn Bjarnason, Reykjavik, Iceland.

There are other references that show that biodiesel adds three times the CO2 to the air that petroleum diesel does. The point to me is not do you take out more than you put in, but do you put any CO2 into the air? It's like if there is an oil spill and you show up in a leaky ship that dumps thousands of gallons a day of oil into the sea and you say oh but I'm cleaning up more than I'm putting in - except that what they are putting in gets cleaned up 200 years later, for example if it is being exhausted out the back of the ship and they are cleaning the ocean from the front and they take one pass around the bay every 200 years. That is what biofuel is like. It uses the atmosphere as a part of the fuel cycle. I'm more concerned about that part of the equation than the net effect on the atmosphere. My conjecture is that if you converted all vehicles to biofuel you would still have 750 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. The only difference is that it would be a sustainable 750 ppm, and not go even higher. Shall I say la di da? The question is how do we get down to a more reasonable 250 ppm, not how can we maintain 750 ppm. That is why I am saying that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that biofuel is not "a solution to global warming", i.e. "how do we get from 380 ppm back down to 250 ppm", which is just as important as "how do we avoid going from 380 to 750 ppm?" 199.125.109.36 (talk) 16:53, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be assuming that CO2 cannot be removed from the atmosphere as quickly as it is added, but if biofuels are to be remotely sustainable in any sense of the word they will have to remove CO2 from the atmosphere that fast -- otherwise the feedstock can't be replenished fast enough to ensure a steady supply of fuel. Futhermore, neither of the Science articles takes the position that biomass cannot remove CO2 that quickly -- they only take the position that biofuels as currently produced do not. As for using the atmosphere as part of the fuel cycle, I suspect that will be nearly impossible to avoid -- at the very least, it precludes burning anything, ever, and one might even make a case that it altogether precludes the generation of energy. --Squirmymcphee (talk) 19:21, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Solar and wind do not require burning anything, ever, and each can provide all of our energy, along with hydrostorage, which doesn't actually provide energy, it uses energy, but allows us to have energy when we need it. What we are going to find is that those three can be combined to provide almost all of our energy, and that we need get only a small percentage from biofuel, and need to restrict the percentage from biofuel to contain CO2 to an appropriate level. The alternative, which is also a solution, is to drastically reduce the use of energy, back to 1850 levels for example. It wouldn't kill anyone to have to walk anywhere they have to go, or to grow their own food. 199.125.109.36 (talk) 02:33, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

At any rate, in the context of Wikipedia our opinions are irrelevant. This is a controversial topic in large part because it is difficult to verify the accuracy of the assumptions that go into any of these studies (as one of the Science articles notes). Yes, there are other studies suggesting that biodiesel adds three times the CO2 to the air that petroleum diesel does, but it's a trivial task to find studies that contradict those. We can debate forever about which is correct and why, but it would be disingenuous at best for either of us to point to a handful of references on this topic and call them authoritative -- those simply don't exist yet (and probably won't for many years to come). If you want to add an even-handed discussion of the controversy and claims that have been made, be my guest (though that would probably be more appropriate for the main biomass page). However, your "not a solution to global warming" statement expresses a distinct point of view, which is inconsistent with Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view. Furthermore, since the statement appears to be an opinion based on your own interpretation of one or more sources, it arguably constitutes original thought. Your statement is most certainly not representative of scientific consensus on the issue, as amply demonstrated by the vast number of contradictory reputable sources, and is therefore not verifiable. In short, while you may be able to construct an intelligent supporting argument for your statement, it is still an opinion that does not meet standards for inclusion in Wikipedia.--Squirmymcphee (talk) 19:21, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

You might have noticed that I didn't even propose including the study about biodiesel. It is clear that we need to be able to think outside the box in order to find ways to eliminate global warming and get CO2 back down to 250 ppm. Anything that supports that objective is clearly interesting. You will notice that we live in a burning building and we are looking for ways to vacuum the rug when we are missing the most important item - the building is burning. You will notice that biofuel was presented as a silver bullet to stop global warming and now reports are surfacing that "the emperor has no clothes". I'm saying that anyone could have seen that. 199.125.109.36 (talk) 02:12, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

There's a big difference between "reports are surfacing" and "it is true." History is full of things that "anyone could see" that turned out false. This particular topic is still quite early in its scientific development. I'm not saying that biodiesel is the "silver bullet" -- in fact, I doubt such a thing exists -- but if you're willing to give up on counterintuitive ideas so easily then I find your statement about thinking outside the box a bit ironic.--Squirmymcphee (talk) 23:30, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

You do realize of course that "what I think" about a topic has nothing to do with anything. What I think we should do is look for references that can be used to support the development of the article. However I do use "what I think" as a reality check from time to time. 199.125.109.81 (talk) 01:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

It's quite simple, really. Biofuel's energy comes from photosynthesis of sunlight--a process that is extremely inefficient--even the well-known inefficiency of solar panels is not as dismal as photosynthesis. ThVa (talk) 09:47, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Find Pimentel

I tried that search on both the article and this discussion with the result text not found. Then I went to google and added a few keyword. See http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm . Table 1. Someone might want to cite the Pimentel Report in the article, because it is an encyclopedic quality reference from the USDA and it is often a discussion point for funding agencies and investors. Nukeh (talk) 02:50, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Revised GDP Figures for China, India, Etc.

Their GDP's were revised sharply downward in 2007 with little fanfare. But all derivative calculations now need to be redone, including probably those on energy intensity. If China's GDP according to the new purchasing power parity calculations is only half what it was previously believed to be, than shouldn't China's energy intensity number double? 2008, April 6

That seems interesting. GDP is Gross Domestic Product, not Gross Domestically consumed Product. 199.125.109.81 (talk) 01:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Hydro Jargon

The jargon "small hydro" and "micro hydro" are used without any introduction or explanation here. Could someone who knows what the hell these mean please fix it? Xezlec (talk) 02:30, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Just as a ballpark, micro hydro would be 10 kW, small hydro 1 MW. There should be some references that can pin it down closer than that. 199.125.109.81 (talk) 01:50, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

In the Consumption/Renewable energy/Hydropower section, please make a link to micro hydro. There already is a link to small hydro. 199.125.109.37 (talk) 23:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Available renewable energy

The reference for the Available renewable energy picture (Sustainable Energy: Choosing Among Options) does not contain the information found in the picture. On page 412 there's a table that lists the Renewable energy fluxes but the table lists wind at 100 TW while the picture lists 370 TW. At the very highest end, The Nature and Theory of the General Circulation of the Atmosphere (Lorenz, 1976) estimates global atmospheric motion has a flux of 3.5 PW. Practical wind power estimates go down to 6 TW (Grubb and Meyer, 1993). Note: Grubb is listed as a source for the table in Sustainable Energy: Choosing Among Options. The wind power page quotes 72 TW citing the Archer and Jacobson study. [1].

The blurb could mention a range of wind power estimates from theoretical to practical, onshore, offshore etc. Whatever the solution the source should back up the information being presented.Mrshaba (talk) 21:07, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The 72 TW number (actually 7.15x10^10 kW in the paper) is "total wind power potential over land from class ≥ 3 areas". The 370 TW is well within reasonable estimates, although I do not know the exact source. The editor who wrote it has left Wikipedia. Table 9.2 on page 412 states that 100 TW is available potential over land. Since 71% of the earth is covered by ocean that would mean at least 344 TW, and since winds are stronger over the oceans than over land, it would be higher. There really is nothing wrong with the diagram or the reference. 370 is well within your above upper limit of 3,500 TW (3.5 PW). 199.125.109.37 (talk) 22:49, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The reference cited quotes 100 TW. The reference seems to use Grubb as an ultimate source but Grubb quotes 6 TW as a practical limit. The reference does not support the numbers in the diagram and I'm not convinced the numbers in the diagram are valid. Do you have a source for the numbers? Mrshaba (talk) 23:47, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

For which numbers? I just showed that the number 370 TW is plausible. No one has said that 370 is a practical limit. The paper says that we can get 100% of our energy from the wind, though, using only 20% of the 72 TW available on land. A lot of people also expect energy demand to increase, but efficiency increases actually tend to decrease energy demand in developed countries. 9 billion people each using 2 kW would only equal 18 TW. 199.125.109.37 (talk) 01:50, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

The reference cited quotes 100 TW but the graphic shows 370 TW. Do you have a source for the 370 TW number in the graphic? Mrshaba (talk) 02:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes. The source is Wes Hermann, Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University[2] It has since been revised to 870 TW.[3] Both are within the same order of magnitude. 870 is not a typo, but 370 could have been, although it can be used because that is the number that was presented to the public. The current chart says it is updated from time to time. "These numbers are occasionally updated as the estimates and assumptions change." 199.125.109.37 (talk) 15:04, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Screwed up numbers

Where does zeta and yatta come from? The cited source (#1) for world energy consumption gives 169 quads. A quad is roughly an exajoule, so somehow you've managed to increase energy use on the planet by a few orders of magnitude. However the spreadhseet numbers are also dubious, as WEC reported world energy consumption as just shy of 450 exajoules in 1995 (as cited in "Sustainable Energy: Choosing Options"). --Belg4mit (talk) 22:43, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Doh, the goofy splitting of the spreadhseet hides the amount of data, and I only saw oil use. --Belg4mit (talk) 17:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite intro

The introduction paragraphs are different to most WP articles. Perhaps some of the formulae, etc should be moved down. StevePrutz (talk) 04:34, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this has already been fixed. The only formulae I see is to explain what EJ and YJ are, which seems entirely reasonable considering very few readers would know. 199.125.109.81 (talk) 04:53, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Energy Intensity of Different Economies Chart

The selection of countries shown in this chart seems rather odd. It implies that Norway is among the most energy intensive per dollar. The raw data suggests otherwise. http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1p.xls Greg Locock (talk) 23:27, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

The table may have changed. Also is the data GDP or GDP (PPP)? That may have changed. The chart was uploaded in February 2007, and the table was updated in October, 2007 (and scheduled to be updated again in July, 2008, even though it is past that now). The hyper paranoid current US seems to have to run everything by everyone before releasing new data. It might be a little messy, but it should be possible to redo the chart to include more countries. Don't hold your breath waiting for the July update - it could be a very long wait. 199.125.109.81 (talk) 04:46, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Energy use by country

Dear Fellow Users

Last year there was a page called "Energy By Country", (I think that was the name). There still seems to be a link for it in the article called "World energy resources and consumption". However, the article is missing. This missing article used to have a list of all countries, and the amount of energy used by each. It was an excellent article with very fundamental information.

The link now leads to a page with links to many energy articles from different counties, but this fundamental information is now very hard to find.

Does anyone know where it can be located, or if this article will be restored.

I think that it would be great to have a page with a chart with the following columns:

Country name total energy consumption (per country/) population /GDP /energy consumption per capita /energy consumption per GDP /GDP per capita /total oil use /total oil use per capita /total electricity use /electricity use per country /nuclear energy per country /hydro energy per country /coal use per country /etc...

this could be in a big chart, and very informative.

Cheers Tushar Mehta MD —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mehtat (talk • contribs) 01:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

There are a few lists at the category listed under see also. If you can identify a deleted file and verify that it was deleted[4], then you can contact an admin who can e-mail you the deleted content. See Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles. 199.125.109.81 (talk) 04:17, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Hydropower

This article says that 'In 2008, hydroelectric power supplied 19% of world electricity'. The given reference verifies '19%', but says nothing about the year. It can't be for 2008 as the year 2008 is not ended yet. The latest figure from the IEA says 16.4% in 2005.[5] Beagel (talk) 14:09, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I've changed it to the ref and data you mention here. It did occur to me that the ref looked too dynamic to use, but your ref is much more static and reliable. NJGW (talk) 14:53, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Article is internally inconsistent with respect to the amount of solar energy available

In World_energy_resources_and_consumption#Solar_power, it is stated : "The available solar energy resources are 3.8 YJ/yr (120,000 TW). Less than 0.02% of available resources are sufficient to entirely replace fossil fuels and nuclear power as an energy source. "

In World_energy_resources_and_consumption#Solar_energy, it is stated: "89 PW[57] of solar power fall on the planet's surface. While it is not possible to capture all, or even most, of this energy, capturing less than 0.02% would be enough to meet the current energy needs."

The first claims that we have 3.8 YJ/yr available. The second claims 89 PW. 89 PW for a year is 2.80856641 YJ/yr. So, we have 3.8 for the first and 2.8 for the second. Not the biggest error ever, but this is a discrepancy and we should either pick one number to go with, or explain why they are different. --Rajah (talk) 06:05, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

3.8 is the amount absorbed by the atmosphere and received at the surface. 2.8 is the amount received at the surface. It doesn't matter which you use, but 2.8 is better if you are talking about solar panels, 3.8 if you are talking about all the ways that solar energy is available, such as including the portion that creates the winds. 199.125.109.81 (talk) 03:59, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Watts vs Joules

Image:World Energy consumption.png Why are most of the charts in Watts? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, unless you consider it "how much energy if it were being used constantly at the same rate" each year. I think it makes much more sense to use TW-hours or Joules... and the graph I've pasted here has a source that gives the values in Quadrillion BTUs, so how and why did the user convert it to Watts? TastyCakes (talk) 21:56, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

The reason they are in watts is that if you put them in joules you would have to ask, over what period of time - for example, if the values were in Quadrillion BTUs, is that per second, hour, fortnight, year, blue moon, century, and I could add many more. Use watts and it is time-invariant. By the way, how many kWh/hour? Isn't that just kW? Quads/year is not an SI unit. 199.125.109.81 (talk) 03:54, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

No, it is not "time invariant" -- the average rate of energy consumption changes from year to year, day to day, minute to minute, second to second. Even if you put it in watts you still have to ask over what period of time, plus you have to be careful to state that it is an average rate of consumption over that time period. Of course, from a scientific standpoint the generally accepted way to handle cases like these is to integrate the actual rate of consumption over a specified period of time, then write the result of the integration (e.g., 10¹⁷ J) and the time period over which the integration was performed (e.g., the year 2005). Writing it this way does not mislead people into thinking that the average rate of consumption over a particular year is somehow physically significant, and it simultaneously provides a figure that is physically significant (the amount of energy consumed over the specified time period).

As for kW-h/h, it is a unit of measure frequently used to distinguish average energy consumption from peak or instantaneous power demand. It is frequently used in manufacturing equipment specifications. The unit itself says, "I can't tell you how much power the machine will draw at any given moment, but I can tell you the number of kW-h it will use in an hour." It is an important figure for determining how much electricity the equipment will use, and it is generally different from the maximum power specification, which is given in watts. What's more, W-h/h is a perfectly valid SI unit.--Squirmymcphee (talk) 07:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Energy versus Power

In large parts of this article power is confused with energy and numbers of the one are compared to numbers of the other (e.g. 'The energy used to generate 2 TW of electricity is approximately 5 TW, '). This needs a fundamental rework, as the numbers make no sense at all. (in the example 'In 2005, global electricity consumption equaled 2 TW' is nonsense, as the electricity consumption equaled about 14000TWh worldwide, and so on.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.83.249.65 (talk) 12:24, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

14000TWh over what period of time? A second, an hour, a century? Power is the rate of energy consumption. All forms of energy consumption are rates of energy consumption. The SI unit for energy per unit of time is the Watt, not the EJ per year or the Quad per year, so consumption can only be expressed as power. When you are talking about energy resources there are two types of resources, renewable and non-renewable. Renewable are always expressed as how much power is available - which is multiplied by a specific period of time to convert to energy - a second, an hour, a month or a year, etc. Non-renewable resources on the other hand are a fixed amount of energy that can be "burned up" as fast or as slow as you wish. We have maybe 35 years of oil at current consumption rates, yet will be on the planet here for about 2 billion years, so at current consumption rates it will be no longer available as an energy source in the blink of an eye. 199.125.109.83 (talk) 16:37, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense. There is no requirement to use anything but base units in SI, and any algebraic combination of base units and/or derived units is expressly acceptable. Thus it is permitted to express energy in kilogram-meters per second squared, newton-meters, or joules, for example. It is also permitted to express power in kilogram-meters per second cubed, newton-meters per second, joules per second, or watts (lowercase "w"). Perhaps more to the point, there is absolutely nothing in the SI standard that forces you to combine quantities in the most compact way possible. That, of course, would be insanity -- we would be forced to talk about power when we mean energy, velocity when we mean distance, and energy when we mean torsion, just to name a few, and the whole point of the SI system is clarity. A die-hard SI maniac might insist on something like "1.38 x 10¹⁷ J/d" (the exajoule is not a coherent SI unit, while the day is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI) instead of "14000 TWh per year," but would most certainly not insist that it be written "4.4 x 10⁸ W" (or whatever). Furthermore, if "year" in the statement "50.4 EJ per year" is used in a conventional, rather than scientific, sense then it need not be expressed in SI units anyway and the statement is perfectly acceptable in SI-only publications. In fact, the BIPM SI brochure -- the SI publication -- itself uses such statements.--Squirmymcphee (talk) 22:16, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Measuring something in hours per year is silly (TWh per year), and unencyclopedic. 199.125.109.134 (talk) 13:32, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

The Wh, in its various forms, is the standard unit of measurement for the electric power industry the world over and electricity consumption is quoted in units of Wh per year by numerous authorities, so I think it is quite difficult to argue that it is inherently unencyclopedic. However, I am not arguing (and never have argued) that the units in this article should be Wh, only that expressing energy consumption in units of energy per year is (a) perfectly valid in SI, (b) far less confusing than expressing it units of power, and (c) far more in keeping with conventional practice. For purposes of this article, I think energy consumption should be expressed in joules (or perhaps tabulated in conventional units -- e.g., boe, BTU, kWh, etc. -- along with its SI equivalent in joules). The only time watts should be used is when expressing an instantaneous value of energy consumption or a generating capacity, not averages over long periods. For example, the total amount of electricity generated in the United States in 2006 should be written 1.46 x 10¹⁹ J, while the nameplate capacity of the plants that generated it should be written 1.075 x 10¹² W (or if you're willing to deviate slightly from strict SI, you might write 14.6 EJ and 1075 GW, respectively).--Squirmymcphee (talk) 07:34, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Different types of energy are commonly measured in a large number of units, Barrels of oil, cubic meters of gas, and on and on. As it says at the top of the article, SI units are used, therefore rates of consumption should only be given in Watts, volumes of reserves only in Joules. That way it keeps all of the units the same for the entire article. Whoever keeps balking and putting in anything else shouldn't be doing that. Governments try to obfuscate, we need to keep thinks understandable. 199.125.109.83 (talk) 18:27, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Another energy unit

The scientists and engineers contributing to this talk page may understand what a TW or 10²⁰ is mathematically, but I doubt they have any "feel" for these numbers. I have added a link to a new page with another energy unit, Cubic mile of oil (CMO). Yes, a mile is not SI, but it is a concept most people can understand and have a sense of. The CMO was created specifically to facilitate public discussion and understanding of the topics of this page.Robsavoie (talk) 06:38, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I understand your point, but I disagree with your opening premise. Personally, I would say that I have a much better "feel" for a TW or 10²⁰ than I do for a cubic mile. I work with such figures regularly and think about them literally every day, but I had never even considered what a cubic mile might look like until just this moment. Off the top of my head I can say that 10²⁰ is roughly the number of atoms in a cubic millimeter of silicon, but a cubic mile is ... what? Have you got something I can compare it to? And while CMO might be designed to facilitate public discussion, it inherently limits that discussion to the US and the UK, which to my knowledge are the only places in the world where a mile is still a common unit of measure.--Squirmymcphee (talk) 07:58, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

There's no question that "mile" is a deprecated unit. It's first value is that the annual consumption of oil is very close to one cubic mile. I think that's a more memorable fact than 4 cubic km. Second, it is a familiar unit in the US, which may be most in need of the public discussion. Your top of the head familiarity is remarkable, but I would argue it is familiarity with the underlying arithmetic operation on numbers, not their scale. For example, off the top of your head -- I mean without doing any mental calculations -- would you say that a star at a distance of 10¹⁷ meters is fairly near or far away? How about if the question is stated as 10 light-years? The proper scale makes discussion easier, especially for people lacking your mathematical ability.Robsavoie (talk) 01:05, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The English-language version of Wikipedia serves the entire English-speaking world, not just the US. Furthermore, Wikipedia is explicitly not a place for discussion, but for notable and verifiable facts presented from a neutral point of view. The importance of a topic might qualify it as notable enough for inclusion, and along those lines I do not oppose the creation of a CMO article as others evidently have. However, I do oppose the use of CMO as the basic unit of measure in an article such as this one. In terms of Wikipedia policy, I think it is enough that energy statistics are not widely reported in units of CMO and would therefore be difficult to verify (and may even be original research) if reported as such. There are also fundamental issues with determining the energy equivalence between a unit of oil and a unit of some other energy source, which is in part why few sources report energy consumption in barrels-of-oil-equivalent.

As for your comment on scale, I can't see how making a mental calculation is unusual or indicates a lack of intuition. That is precisely how we as humans comprehend scale. Considering what I do at work every day, my top-of-the-head familiarity is no more remarkable than that of a mechanic who can find the right sized wrench for a bolt simply by look or feel.--Squirmymcphee (talk) 20:58, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Power per m2

It seems that this point hasn't been raised before. I personally think that the power per m2 concept is interesting in order to compare different resources. However, it is important to know per surface of what. I think that the introduction presenting an average "1366 watts per square meter" for the Sun power received by the Earth might be misleading, because most readers will think it is per square meter of Earth surface when it is in fact per square meter of an artificial disc that would results by the intersection of the Earth sphere and the plane perpendicular to the sun rays passing by its center... I would propose: 1-to state very clearly what surface is considered 2-why not giving an average for the Earth surface also as reference (5.067 10^14 m2). That would be much better for comparison, though it is clear that the Sun power received by the Earth is not evenly distributed on the sphere (most readers would guess it I believe). Just by considering the sphere instead of (one side) of a disc, we go from about 1366 W/m2 to 340 W/m2 (well, 1/4th). This would prevent mistakes I think.Nietzsche61 (talk) 07:06, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what type of "mistake" you had in mind. Who did you think was going to be using the information, and what were they going to be using it for? If someone is thinking of putting up solar panels, they aren't going to be using that number, they are going to use a solar calculator for their region, such as is available for Europe and Africa from the photovoltaics article. I don't see that we need to give values such as the surface area of the earth, because that is certainly available from the earth article. 199.125.109.81 (talk) 12:44, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

For the mistakes, I've seen enough on internet and in publications to think that adding a clarification wouldn't hurt, (people using 1kW/m2 as a calculation base for solar power availaility). However, I agree with you that people should use solar calculator if they want to put solar panels. My point wasn't to give the surface area of the earth, it was just to add a comment addressing the Disc/Sphere issue that isn't clearly stated in the article. That's all.Nietzsche61 (talk) 06:27, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguating energy consumption

Since Energy consumption was a redirect here, I would like people's input at Talk:Energy consumption#Disambiguation. — Sebastian 05:57, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Global warming

I made a small adjustment for a few absolute statements made connecting GHGs and global warming. While some people are absolutely certain the connection is proven and not open to debate (most of them people who also think "concensus" has anything to do with science) the subject IS, in fact, open to debate with a large number of reputable sources for information. I didn't reject the connection, I only acked that it is a claimed connection and far from proven at this point. There is a clear and self evident major competitor to this notion in both the recent behavior of global temperatures when solar output is considered and the fact that there is ample evidence that "global warming" has occurred on other planets in the solar system, for which MMAGW cannot possibly be blamed. Neither position or argument is proven or disproven within the bounds of reasonable argument given the current facts in evidence. So it is, at this point, a claim and, by wiki rules, the article should be at least reasonably neutral on this. The concerns are left in the article but the absolute nature of them has been softened slightly. -- Obloodyhell 24.250.216.51 (talk) 14:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

This isn't the place to have this debate. Scientific consensus is what we go by here. You can argue wp:fringe and minority positions at global warming. NJGW (talk) 16:54, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

What years?

World_energy_resources_and_consumption#Fossil_fuels ends with "Over the last forty years, the use of fossil fuels has continued to grow and their share of the energy supply has increased. In the last three years, coal, which is one of the dirtiest sources of energy, has become the fastest growing fossil fuel.". 1.5 years ago (500 revisions ago) the page said the same. While 40 and 1.5 are numbers of different scale, 3 and 1.5 are not. In fact the article is quite full on various time definitions relative to "now" without definition of "now" which happens to change every moment. While I may be wrong it seems that "last three years" is referenced to 16 year old printed book, which is a bit old to explain the trends of "last three years" relative to the "now" as it says on my signature. Drundia (talk) 18:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

WP:MOS says to put in specific dates, and avoid "currently", "now", and "recently". However, the situation has not appeared to have changed over the last 20 years, as I believe that coal is still the fastest growing fossil fuel. But that is still no excuse for not giving specific dates. 199.125.109.83 (talk) 03:53, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Article problems

things that are wrong:

Use of pseudoscience. Use of scientific terms incorrectly. Use of made-up 'scientific terms' like 'energy flux', 'power density'. Confusion whilst using units. Incorrect 'facts' from poor sources (GCSE Business studies resources for such an important topic...), no links to reputable scientific journals. Weasel words and possible npov violations in the article ordering. Crappy crappy excel graphs galore. Poor style of prose and use of colloquialisms. Ramblings into other topics without saying why they are relevant!

In short, this article is bad. Which is not good, especially for such an important topic. I've done my best to correct the worst errors. Jw2035 (talk) 03:48, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

'Energy flux' and 'Power density' are not made-up terms. The units look fine to me, but maybe you corrected them. Please give any specific examples. --Jsvoyager (talk) 00:13, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a section on per capita energy consumption

Per capita graph would give a completely different perspective.

It is an important factor as per capita energy consumption has stagnated worldwide since 1979

Ganesh Nayak U (talk) 13:27, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Reserves

Assessment Team |url= http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-060/ESpt4.html#Table | accessdate=2007-01-18}}</ref>

Fuel	Energy reserves in ZJ
Coal	290.0
Oil	18.4
Gas	15.7

This table lists the proven reserves, actual reserves are much higher. To only list that what has been found and can be exploited with today's technology significantly underrepresents the actual reserves on the planet. The pie chart shows more than 50 ZJ for oil and that is a much more credible number. SImerlarly the gas number is too low as it ignores gas from tight formations and the coal number should probably be double. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.76.204.60 (talk) 02:23, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be 16 TW not 15 TW for total average energy consumption rate?

It should be 15 TW or 0.5 Zetta Joules per year or 11295 million barrals of oil equivalent. Check out the BP report for 2009 that has data for the last 44 years. url: http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&contentId=7044622 The spreadsheet also has the neccessary conversion factors. Beware of too much false precision however, the underlying data is not that accurate.

. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cleanenergy (talk • contribs) 12:05, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

2nd paragraph in intro: "... total worldwide energy consumption was 500 EJ (= 5 x 1020 J) .....This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 TW (= 1.5 x 1013 W)." By my math it is equivalent to 15.85 TW so I think it should be given as 16 TW, not 15 TW. Moreover the current value is presumably even greater than 15.85 TW so the 16 TW factoid is a good one to convey to the reader.Catalyzer (talk) 19:21, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

31 PW of power from Tides?

In addition to all the goofy use of units expressed by other commentators below there's an implied fact that really needs to be cited.

At the end of the 2nd paragraph the author claims that 89PW of solar power reaches the earth and at the end of the 2nd paragraph the author claims that the earth receives 120PW of renewable power. The author's definition of solar power would include things like wind and most hydro plants, definitely those that are rain/snow-melt fed.

There are only two other sources of power to fill the gap between the 89PW in the first paragraph and 120 PW in the 2nd. Tidal based hydro power and geothermal. I find it hard to believe that 1/3rd of the power from the sun is also available through these 2 means and this claim would certainly need some references to enforce it.

Indeed, this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget seems to claim that geothermal and tides make up less than 0.1% (way less) of the incoming energy budget of the globe . Perhaps the original author got PW and TW confused? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jamida (talk • contribs) 18:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Global tidal power is around 3 TW. I think the difference is between "energy" and "usable energy" also known as exergy. Wes Herman wrote a few papers on the subject if you are interested you might want to google him. Some of Herman's work can been seen at the following link: http://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/DyUMPHW1jsSmjoZfm2XEqg/1.3-Hermann.pdf

Also the 89 PW is on the surface only, the theoretical energy flux for the planet is higher as you can see in the last figure of the article. Cleanenergy (talk) 02:45, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

474 exajoules?

First of all I want to say this is my first attempt to make a contribution to Wikipedia, and please correct me if I'm breaking some guidelines or rules in doing so.

I'm questioning the first statement "In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules". 4.74e20J seems to be from the "Statistical Review of World Energy 2009" by BP. In that review the world's "PRIMARY energy Consumption" is stated as 11294.9 Mtoe, which equals 4.74e20J (11294.9 Mtoe * 1e6 * 42e9 J/Mtoe = 4.74e20J).

According to the BP review: "primary energy comprises commercially traded fuels only. Excluded, therefore, are fuels such as wood, peat and animal waste that, though important in many countries, are unreliably documented in terms of consumption statistics. Also excluded are wind, geothermal and solar power generation."

What I'm saying is that the worldwide total energy consumption is larger than the BP defined PRIMARY energy consumption. I'm not suggesting a change in Wikipedia artice to the BP term "primary energy", I would be much more interested in seeing a total which would include the parts that BP omits. I'm sure the total value wouldn't be very much higher than the BP figure, but nevertheless important to know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Krille Katalog (talk • contribs) 16:50, 1 November 2009 (UTC) --Krille Katalog (talk) 16:55, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Interesting, and maybe you could track down the other aspect you are talking about, format that a little and put up a projection of that on the talk page, so we could discuss it. What you are bringing up is certainly pertinent. skip sievert (talk) 17:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Sievert for your comment. I'm not sure I understand it though. Are you suggesting I come up with a better figure of "total energy consumption" and present it here on the discussion page?--Krille Katalog (talk) 21:27, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I've been searching a bit for alternative sources of information on this subject. IEA (International energy agency) seems to have info, but it is not free. I have also found information at Energy Information Administration of DOE, US. They state the world's "consumption of primary energy" in 2007 to be 5.10e20 J (4.83597e17 BTU * 1055.056 J/BTU ... there are too many Energy Units in this world :-) ), http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=44&pid=44&aid=2. This figure (from 2007) is almost 10% higher than the BP figure (from 2008).

The definition EIA uses for "primary energy" is also much more inclusive than the BP definition. The following is stated in the EIA glossary: "The Energy Information Administration includes the following in U.S. primary energy consumption: coal consumption; coal coke net imports; petroleum consumption (petroleum products supplied, including natural gas plant liquids and crude oil burned as fuel); dry natural gas—excluding supplemental gaseous fuels—consumption; nuclear electricity net generation (converted to Btu using the nuclear plants heat rate); conventional hydroelectricity net generation (converted to Btu using the fossil-fueled plants heat rate); geothermal electricity net generation (converted to Btu using the geothermal plants heat rate), and geothermal heat pump energy and geothermal direct use energy; solar thermal and photovoltaic electricity net generation (converted to Btu using the fossil-fueled plants heat rate), and solar thermal direct use energy; wind electricity net generation (converted to Btu using the fossil-fueled plants heat rate); wood and wood-derived fuels consumption; biomass waste consumption; fuel ethanol and biodiesel consumption; losses and co-products from the production of fuel ethanol and biodiesel; and electricity net imports (converted to Btu using the electricity heat content of 3,412 Btu per kilowatthour)." Probably the same definition applies when they collect energy consumption data from other countries than US.

It seems to me that the EIA figure is a better figure to represent the world energy consumption in the Wikipedia article than the current BP figure. What do you all think? I also have no experience of EIA and their credibility. Anyone has? --Krille Katalog (talk) 22:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

ZJ

ZJ, which I interpret to mean as "exajoules" is used frequently throughout the article without explanation. A brief definition might be in order somewhere, preferably at its first usage. Mitch Courtenay (talk) 04:22, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

The scatterplot

There is something fishy in the scatterplot (GDP\Capita vs Energy/Capita):

1. Title: Energy consumption per capita versus the GNP per capita - the axis title shows GDP rather then GNP
2. Legend: "The graph plots the per capita energy versus the per capita income" - the axis shows kW\capita, i.e. Capacity rather then energy
3. In the source booklet there are two estimations for energy': Energy production and TPES, both measured in toe. For example for US the fist is 1'641 toe, the second - 2'326 toe? that gives per capita (294): 5.58 and 7.91. The plot gives for US "Energy per capita" slightly more then 10. What does this mean? Сергей Олегович (talk) 16:18, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Nuclear energy and oil bashing

It's pretty clear that the same person did the write-up for the nuclear energy portion and for the portion later on promoting abandonment of fossil fuels.

I'm not going to make any bold political or scientific statements here, but the wiki is supposed to give facts in an unbiased fashion, and there are portions of this article that read like a political pundit wrote them for a platform about nuclear energy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.49.150.10 (talk) 18:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Correcting information about oil production since 2005 (mistaken oil production and liquid fuels production), adding data from 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.246.67.228 (talk) 12:17, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree with comments by 130.49.150.10, Nuclear section reads like an op-ed piece and falls short of neutral POV. Example: "The people in the US have been and are being led to believe that the development of nuclear power in the world essentially ended with Chernobyl". Who says we/they are being led to believe that?. And if so who is leading us to believe it? Personally, don't accept there is even a widespread opinion in the US population on nuclear technology DEVELOPMENT in the years since Chernobyl (however, there may be a public opinion issue with plans to site new reactors in anyones "back yard", but that is not eh same thing at all) Also, section lacks citations multiple places regarding these various "CANDU" and other reactors that are apparently in construction. Also, is it really significant that one or two Canadian reactors were re-started sometime in the past several years? Suggest the para needs a thorough re-write by an unbiased expert.Turbine1 (talk) 00:24, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

This article seems to be missing a major type of solar power

A company called Enviromission http://www.enviromission.com.au/EVM/content/technology_technologyover.html

Has been around for about 10 years. They are currently contracted to build one (of a possible 2) Solar Chimney type power plants in the southwest USA. These can operate 24/7.

A German firm has a variation called the Green Tower, this one has some interesting advantages 1) it increases the agricultural output of the roughly 3 sq miles of land it occupies by 270%; 2) it has 6 days of heat reserve to run at 89% output the entire time, and 3) it is designed to run for 160 years. http://www.greentower.net/

These solar power plants are cost competitive with coal fired plants. I've estimated that 76,000 of them would be able to supply the world's energy needs.

Anyone care to add this to the page?

174.22.52.190 (talk) 06:51, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

All well and good yet they seem to be remarkably unsuccessful in practice. Can you find an example of one that has repaid the energy that it took to construct it? Greglocock (talk) 08:03, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Thermal vs electric

I'm concerned that we are mixing thermal and electric energy numbers. They are not directly comparable even though they are in the same units. For example, if coal plants operate at 33% efficiency, one gigawatt of nuclear energy replaces 3 gigawatts of coal energy. So the 6% of energy from nuclear vs 25% from coal, as stated in the article, is very misleading. --agr (talk) 16:12, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree, but more in general. The first paragraph should clearly state weather or not energy consumption rates stated in the article are totaled before or after conversion efficiencies are taken into account. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.36.94.35 (talk) 20:47, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Double standard - uranium vs solar flux

The article states what the total energy flux from the Sun is, and then compares this to the reserves of uranium. This is a double standard, because uranium reserves include only resources that are economically extractable in the near future, while the solar flux from the Sun includes energy that cannot be extracted - for example it's impossible to build solar panels over the oceans or farmland, and there are raw material limitations.

To have a like-to-like comparison, we would need to compare the total amount of uranium in Earth's crust to the solar flux. Using figures from here [www.sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad11983cohen.pdf], namely that there are 6.3 · 10¹³ tonnes of uranium in the Earth's crust and breeder reactors could achieve 1 GWe year/tonne, this gives slightly less than 1 988 000 YJ, which is equivalent to 550 000 years of solar flux. There is about 3x more thorium on Earth than uranium, which gives another 1 650 000 years of solar flux, for a grand total of over 2 200 000 years. --Tweenk (talk) 22:26, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Solar energy

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/service/gallery/fact_sheets/earthsci/terra/earths_energy_balance.htm might help with a source for the total solar energy received (the number's 4.4*10^16 W). This differs from the cited value on Solar Energy by a facter of 1/3 (The article on Solar Energy cites a 2006 paper that reports 3.85*10^6 exajoules or ~1.2*10^17 W or approximately 3 times the NASA estimate). I'm not very good with this editing stuff but hopefully one of you who's better can squeeze it in somewhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.178.147.116 (talk) 10:00, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I added a quick segment about infrared solar panel technology which potentially deals with the problem of solar power generation in both cloudy and dark conditions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.64.251.116 (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Number mismatch renewables

Renewable Energy is at one point referred to providing 6-8% of the energy (in the charts), in the renewables section it is given at 19%. I checked the cited paper it said 19% of "global final energy consumption" - I assume that is different, but it is really confusing and should be clarified —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.148.233.81 (talk) 19:35, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Also this text (or the oil reserves chart) is incorrect. It says "The estimates of remaining non-renewable worldwide energy resources vary, with the remaining fossil fuels totaling an estimated 0.4 YJ (1 YJ = 1024J) and the available nuclear fuel such as uranium exceeding 2.5 YJ." But according to the chart there are 35ZJ of recoverable oil. 35ZJ = 0.035YJ (or rounded to 0.04YJ). The text's number is 10X too big (or the chart's numbers are 10X to small). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.159.238.170 (talk) 21:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

By country section

Some of the information in this section is misleading. Numbers given is not in KWH, but in KW. Are there anybody in Germany who use less then 6 KWH per year? Either these numbers should be converted to KWH, convention factor is 8.766 (365 days* 24 h in a day) or it should be told that it is average power and units must be KW. 84.237.204.241 (talk) 21:22, 8 August 2011 (UTC) Janis Brizs

US Energy Information Administration ≠ IEA

The first two sentences in Primary Energy seem to imply that the US Energy Information Administration is the same thing as the IEA (which is actually the International Energy Agency). We need to determine what data comes from what entity and cite appropriately. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leveretth (talk • contribs) 20:54, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Nuclear power - consumption

In the table in section Consumption - Primary energy is 929GW for nuclear power (2006). But installed capacity is below 400GWe (see section Nuclear power).

In cited source http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table18.xls 27.758E15 Btu = 28E15 kJ = 28 EJ (approx.) i.e. about 900GW

but see notes http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/iea/Notes%20for%20Table%201_8.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.228.230.250 (talk) 14:05, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree, the numbers in the nuclear section simply don't make sense. 2658 TWh (Tera-watt per hour) is 9.6 EJ, not 23.3. And neither 9.6 nor 23.3 is 16% of the total mentioned in the top (474EJ), even give or take some drift for the numbers not representing the same year. Can someone clear this up? Uffish (talk) 20:48, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to be able to clear up all the questions presented in this section, but it appears the main article has been changed since these questions were asked, so I can only go on the numbers presented in this discussion. The 929GW figure is most likely the thermal nuclear capacity (sometimes written GWt). The 400 GWe figure is the amount of electricity produced. The output of power plants will frequently includ either the thermal output (total heat produced, including the heat that is wasted, i.e., deposited into the atmosphere as steam, or into a body of water, such as the Pacific Ocean for the San Onofre nuclear power plant in California, USA), and/or the electrical output. The electrical output is usually about 30 - 40% of the thermal output. 400/929 ≈ 43.1% effeciency.

TWh = tera watt hour, not tera-watt per hour. Wh is a unit of energy. W is a unit of power. Power is a unit of energy divided by a unit of time. Dividing power by time (Tera-watt per hour) makes no sense, at least in this context. This is just a guess here because I don't have the original data, but 9.6 EJ/23.3 EJ ≈ 41.2% effeciency.

See http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf32.html. Having said all this, the effeciencies I calculated here seem a bit high. They should be closer to 33% - 37%. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leveretth (talk • contribs) 20:46, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

There is no mention of Thorium supplies in the article. Far more reserves worldwide (and easier to mine) than uranium. www.energyfromthorium.com is one resource with a huge volume of reference materials and original research from Oak Ridge National Labs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.226.61.96 (talk) 13:00, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Oil Production Energy Efficiency

What is the world-wide average energy efficiency of oil production? In other words how much energy does it take to drill and pump oil out of the ground in relationship to the quantity of energy recovered in the oil so produced, and calculated on the average of all oil fields in the world? If one was to prepare a chart that graphs the history of this value over time, we would have a much better idea of the energy related danger our civilization now faces, as this value represents more accurately than any other the true cost of oil. Examining the trend of this value would be much more illuminating than attempting to pinpoint the nebulous concept of the occurrence of peak oil. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.224.70.107 (talk) 02:30, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I think this has already been done, look it up starting from the EROI article. --84.153.80.165 (talk) 00:19, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Consumption vs imports and production

Any chance of someone coming up with tables that relate directly to consumption for the 'by country' section, rather than imports and production? --Oolong (talk) 13:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The Swedish study does not say 'Renewables' it states 'others'

'Others' include many non-renewable highly polluting fuels like peat. In fact the majority of the energy from this 'Other' comes from the burning of peat etc. Unlike wood, peat is not regarded as 'renewable'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boundarylayer (talk • contribs) 04:25, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Please don't use Watt-hour, Use Joules

I hate it when people use W.h for energy. Use Joules. And when people use W.h for the energy per unit of time, it's even more ridiculous. Use Watts.

So for instance in this article I read that the energy consumption for 1990 was E = 102,569 TW.h. During a year. That's 369,248,400 TJ, aka 369 EJ for the whole year, which correspond to an average power of about 12 TW.

--Grondilu (talk) 17:56, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree, The article concerns every source of energy and every manner in which it is exploited by us, not just "electricity", it says it includes energy consumed by non-Electric vehicles, by industries, household usage of fossil fuels etc, atleast that's what the first para says . Joules is a more acceptable definition.

Clarifications required regarding consumption

Please be specific in time of consumption.

Example: "In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W)." it's not clear in what time 15 terawatts are consumed it`s obwious to me that it's in hours, but maybe it's not to others.

And if this is "World energy consumption" you should put an LARGE post of how much of energy was consumed like example: 2008 = 15 TW/h ; 2009 = ... ; 2010 ...

Similarly, in the By country section: Japan and Germany with an energy consumption rate of 6 kW per person and the United States with an energy consumption rate of 11.4 kW per person.. kW is not a rate so are these "per person" values over a lifetime, a year, an hour? 78.144.78.66 (talk) 09:45, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

You are confused about the meaning of Watt and Joule, I think. Joule is the SI unit for measuring energy, while Watt (and thus kW also) really IS a rate. It's the rate of energy consumption in Joules per second. So when the article says that the rate of energy consumption is 15 terawatts, that means that the rate of energy consumption is 15 terajoules per second. 83.251.27.165 (talk) 10:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Trends

Can someone please check the figures in the Trends section, specifically those for renewable energy potential, as I don't think they match the figures used in the source. Example: the annual energy potential for Ocean energy is given as 1 EJ, the relevant tables in the sources seem to quote a figure of 7400 EJ. Or have I missed something? Jim420780 (talk) 13:09, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

what kind of energy is consumed ?

how much of it is used for thermal energy purposes and how much for electrical ?

for example: house heating, car fuels, lighting or electrical devices....

how does it look like globally ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.180.23.0 (talk) 15:02, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Energy use in terawatt-hours per which period?

The first table (in the header) says that in 2008 we used 140 terawatt-hours, referring Eenergiläget i siffror 2011 figure 49 and 53. I was once embarrassed in the public citing these figures and indeed, main text says about 15*1000 tera-watt hours per year. What is the point of the Sweedish table? Can we have at least clarification what is the period of integration (weeks, months?) under the Sweedish data instead of the invaluable information that 1 terawatt-hour (TWh) = 1 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) = 1012 watt-hours. I understand that you cannot translate terawatts into billions of watts without this irreplacable notice but can we also know what 140 TW-h per 2008 mean so that others people do not get embarrassed next time like me? --Javalenok (talk) 17:34, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

The number is 143,851, not 140. It is 1000 times more. --Ita140188 (talk) 21:19, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Thanks for not saying that this is not intuitive since here in Europe we use comma for decimal separator (and data pretends to be from Europe). Secondly, this still contradicts to the second chart anyway (140 k is way larger than 15 k we have for the world). Do you mean that legend is ok and nothing must be added to it? --Javalenok (talk) 13:57, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm from Italy, so I can understand the comma mistake, but in the english wikipedia dot is always used as the decimal mark. Moreover, international publications in english almost always use the dot, even if they come from different countries. Data on the table are more or less consistent with other data you can find on the internet, after the relevant conversions (these type of energy data are not usually expressed in TWh, but in tonne of oil equivalent or exajoules). Of course there is a great deal of uncertainty and these numbers also vary according to the conventions used. It should also be noted that there's a difference between energy production and energy consumption, final energy and primary energy, total energy and electricity etc., so it's not that simple to compare two numbers without knowing the context. I agree that the table is not really clear about this. --Ita140188 (talk) 16:18, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Wait, are you saying that 140k is produced while only 10% is consumed? --Javalenok (talk) 07:41, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

No, I'm not saying that. I don't know where that data came from. I went to the source, which is the BP Statistical Review of World Energy [6], and I found that actually the figure there is 11,466 Mtoe = 133,349 TWh. The other chart in this page shows a total consumption of about 500*10^15 btu, which is about 146,000 TWh, also similar to the figure in the table. --Ita140188 (talk) 09:07, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Here is the figure. I see 15 * 1000 TWh. What do you see? Where do get 146,000 TWh from? Do you understand that 15k is very different from 146k? --Javalenok (talk) 15:14, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

If you sum all the contributions for each source the total is much higher than 15,000 TWh (still lower than 146,000 though). I checked the figure description and to calculate the data they used a factor of 0.38 to account for the conversion effciency. This means that they converted from primary energy to final energy I guess. --Ita140188 (talk) 15:31, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Inappropriate Edits By User Siphon06

Recent edits by user:Siphon06 are inappropriate for wikipedia.

• 11:58, 3 October 2014‎ Siphon06
  • Edit-Comment: "Primary energy: removed subjective content that misses the main points of the data. It is irrelevant to the article what Greenpeace thinks or wants. This is about facts not wants."
  • Added Content: However, despite climate agreements, renewable energy targets and energy efficiency improvements, the increases in renewable energy are much smaller than the growth of fossil fuel consumption, as the following figures show. [no ref]

• 12:14, 3 October 2014‎ Siphon06
  • Edit-Comment: "Emissions: added other emissions than greenhouse gasses plus WHO links to estimates of air pollution deaths"
  • Added Content: Greenhouse gasses are not the only emissions of energy production and consumption. Large amounts of pollutants such as sulphurous oxides (SOx), nitrous oxides (NOx), and particulate matter (PM) are produced from the combustion of fossil fuels and biomass; the World Health Organisation estimates that 7 million premature deaths are caused each year by air pollution. Biomass combustion is a major contributor, even though it is typically counted as renewable in energy statistics. In addition to producing air pollution like fossil fuel combustion, most biomass has high CO2 emissions. .

I consider both edits inappropriate for wikipedia. The comparison of CO₂ emissions between biomass and fossil fuels is distrurbing and distracts from the basic principles of the carbon cycle. Especially this source form the website "Partnership for Policy integrity" is inappropriate. Moreover I criticize these two edits for their tone, the absence of any links to any other wikipedia articles, as well as for the unsophisticated presentation of the chemical formulas (e.g. CO2 instead of CO₂). - Rfassbind (talk) 16:38, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

References

Consumption vs Supply

The most prominent table on the page is titled "Energy use in tera-watts," which suggests that the table contains information on global energy consumption. However, the cited source (https://www.energimyndigheten.se/Global/Statistik/Energil%C3%A4get/Energil%C3%A4get%20i%20siffror%202011.pdf) lists this number in a table title "Global Supply of Energy." A similar resource (http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/KeyWorld2014.pdf) lists the global energy supply in 2012 at 155,504 tera-watt hours (13,371 Mtoe) (similar to the number in the figure) but the global energy consumption in 2012 at 104,425 tera-att hours (8979 Mtoe). So clearly the table does not show global energy consumption, but rather global energy supply. I think the table should be retitled "Energy supply in tera-watts" or replaced with a table that shows energy consumption, since the word "use" seems to indicate "consumption," not "supply." Pokeronskis (talk) 23:51, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Undone edits in Wikitable section Overview

****ORIGINAL+EXTENDED REINSTALLED VERSION****
Key figures ¹

Year	Primary energy supply (TPES)2	Final energy consumption2	Electricity generation	Ref
1973	71,013 (Mtoe 6,106)	54,335 (Mtoe 4,672)	6,129
1990	102,569	–	11,821	–
2000	117,687	–	15,395	–
2010	147,899 (Mtoe 12,717)	100,914 (Mtoe 8,677)	21,431
2011	152,504 (Mtoe 13,113)	103,716 (Mtoe 8,918)	22,126
2012	155,505 (Mtoe 13,371)	104,426 (Mtoe 8,979)	22,668
1 all figures given in terawatt-hours (TWh) 2 converted from Mtoe into TWh (1 Mtoe = 11.63 TWh) Source: IEA – Key World Energy Statistics, as per 2014

World Energy Consumption, Final Energy Consumption, and Electricity Generation

Year	World Energy Consumption	Final energy Consumption	Electricity Generation
1973	71,013	54,335	5,094
1990	102,569	–	9,392
2000	117,687	–	12,116
2011	152,504	103,716	18,050
2012	155,505	104,426	18,608
1 all figures given in terawatt-hours (TWh) 2 converted from Mtoe into TWh (1 Mtoe = 11.63 TWh) Source: IEA – Key World Energy Statistics, as per 2014

There have been several edits to the wikitable in section "Overview". I reinstalled the original version. The figures are all sourced. No more monkey business, please. If anyone thinks this table could be improved, please discuss your suggestion first. Rfassbind -talk 17:43, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

In addition, table now includes figures for 2010. I also added value in Mtoe as used in the source. Furthermore, User talk:JohnPRsrcher mentioned the discrepancy in IEA's figures for "electricity" (i.e. figures of 22,668TWh vs. 18,608TWh in 2012). I believe that the difference (about 18%) of electricity generation vs. electricity consumption. We could add a fourth column (Electricity consumption), to include these figures as well. Although they must be checked first. I therefore already asked John to post on this talk page all the date (URL, page number) he used. Last but not least, the figures for 1990 and 2000 are still not sourced. Can someone please find an online Key World Energy Statistics report that includes these figures and cite accordingly? -- Cheers, Rfassbind -talk 16:45, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Overall revision of article Suggestion

I'm not happy with the article and I think it needs an overall revision. Is there anyone who does not agree on that? Here's a short list of issues and proposals.

• Focus: more on context less on figures and tables. Revise the article's structure (sections).
• Scope: there are several other articles Energy consumption, Primary energy, Energy development and Electric energy consumption. These articles basically "ignore" each other. This is a big mistake.
• Terms: Energy vs. electricity, (total) supply vs. (final) consumption must be thoroughly explained, and the terms must be compared to each other already in the lead section. This should help to avoid confusion and result in fewer misguided edits.
• Sources: many energy-related articles, including this one, have inappropriate sources. For example this Swedish report that leads to a dead link, <ref name="energiläget2010">Energy in Sweden 2010, Facts and figures Table 55 Regional energy use, 1990 and 2008 (kWh per capita)</ref>. I propose to base the article on a main source/organization (IEA).
• Figures: historical data should be displayed in graphs and diagrams that can easily be updated manually. The number of tables listing historical data should be minimized. It's already frustrating how delayed data is published. For example, IEA's Key World Energy Statistics 2014 reports data from 2012. We're now in 2015...

Please let me know what you think and what we can/should do. Otherwise, oh well. Cheers, -- Rfassbind -talk 11:20, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree. The article as it is is not clear. Do you have in mind what the new organization should be? I'm ready to help! --Ita140188 (talk) 11:35, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Focus: For me personally, I mostly just want to see charts and graphs. Scope: Agree. Sources: Disagree. What's inappropriate about the Swedish source other than the dead link? It can be dangerous to depend too much on a single source (IEA). Figures: I agree that it's annoying they are so out of date. I'd also like to see them go farther back than they do. Kendall-K1 (talk) 14:59, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

@Kendall-K1: Thx for the reply. Could you please try to fix those two Swedish citations? I already tried unsuccessfully some time ago. We need to find the source first before we can have a discussion about it, don't you think? Cheers, -- Rfassbind -talk 06:38, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Do you have some reason to think the information sourced to this report is wrong, or that the report doesn't exist? Maybe the same information could be found in this 2012 update: [7] Kendall-K1 (talk) 11:26, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

@Kendall-K1: Please note, that I consider the Swedish source as inappropriate; I didn't say it's wrong. The PDF you linked above is one of three PDF documents that are listed on the Energy in Sweden 2012 webpage. The actual report is from October 2012. I couldn't find a more recent edition (please verify). This report is still inappropriate as most data ends by 2010. As soon as IEA's Key World Energy Statistics 2015 report will be released, I'll have to remove the Swedish statistic data from the article. -- Cheers, Rfassbind -talk 09:29, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

If we have more recent data we should of course use it instead. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't remove the data from the Swedish source just because the link is dead. Kendall-K1 (talk) 10:25, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

I would be concerned about the dated info if recent figures were available, they generally aren't. The changes to consumption are very gradual, there is no revolution to report. I'd appreciate the use of show/hide for some of the details.Dougmcdonell (talk) 20:21, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

@Kendall-K1: Again, that's not what my post is saying. Is there or isn't there an edition of Energy in Sweden from 2013, 2014 or 2015? If not, why should we assume that there will be another edition published in the future? Tables that display figures for 2008, 2009 and 2010 are not useful if there is no continuation. I feel like wasting my time discussing an overall revision of the article, with no actual useful contribution whatsoever. Rfassbind -talk 17:09, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Fassbind. World energy consumption should be about energy consumption. In section 1.1 a clear distinction is made with energy supply but actually both consumption and supply are treated which makes this article very long and less surveyable. It covers too much.

I suggest to move most of the supply issues to other articles and divide consumption into its main forms, electricity and fuel. There is an article World electricity consumption so World energy consumption may focus on fuel consumption: history, present use and possible replacement of fossil fuel by bio fuel and electrification of heating and combustion engines. That's quite enough. Rwbest (talk) 14:17, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

first paragraph

whats going on with the first paragraph? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.183.220.193 (talk) 23:05, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Will make correction to first paragraph. Remove reference to nuclear energy generated in core. It not relevant. It wrongly compares energy with power. John15CM (talk) 11:22, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

"Renewable" is misleading

It is highly misleading to suggest that "biomass" is renewable energy. Trees are not renewable, just because trees can grow. Only those sources of energy whose reserves are not depleted more quickly than we can extract should be considered renewable, and we know that this is not the case for our forests. You might as well argue that petroleum is renewable, since some of the dead organisms will turn into oil eventually. 19% figure for "renewable energy" that includes "traditional biomass" does not provide a correct picture of the current state of world energy consumption. It manipulates figures to foster unfounded optimism. Sadicarnot78 (talk) 23:14, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

As the International Energy Agency explains:

"Renewable energy is derived from natural processes that are replenished constantly. In its various forms, it derives directly from the sun, or from heat generated deep within the earth. Included in the definition is electricity and heat generated from solar, wind, ocean, hydropower, biomass, geothermal resources, and biofuels and hydrogen derived from renewable resources." (see Renewable energy... into the mainstream p. 9.)

Each of these sources, including biomass, has unique characteristics which influence how and where they are used. Johnfos (talk) 23:53, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Biomass certainly has unique characteristics. However none of its characteristics, unique or not, match "renewable." Biomass is not replenished constantly. Take a look at these photos of Haitian hillsides and tell me trees are renewable fuel. [8] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.44.92.28 (talk) 12:44, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Some numbers. From the wikipedia page on biomass(ecology), I find a global rate of biomass production of 100 billions tons per year. Multiplying by a typical heating value of 15 MJ/kg, this gives 3 PW. For comparison, the primary energy supply is 20 TW according to this article. Benjamin.friedrich (talk) 21:35, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

The first two charts

The first chart in the article shows that oil and coal have approximately equal shares of world energy consumption, with coal slightly less. The second chart shows oil at 40% and coal at 10%. This appears contradictory, and after reading the article I'm left more confused, not less. Is there a difference between "World Energy Consumption" and "World total final consumption"? I suspect the first chart is what is later called "primary energy", is this correct? This really needs to be clarified. Kendall-K1 (talk) 16:17, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Confusing, and happens all the time. The report used for the first graph "primary energy" comprises commercially-traded fuels, including modern renewables used to generate electricity. In the report used for second graph "production" is the total of energy sources and "final consumption" is the net energy used, which is what's represented in the graph. In short they aren't comparing apples to apples, one shows gross production and the other shows net consumption. The first graph is mis-lableed it should be titled "World Production".Dougmcdonell (talk) 22:40, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Essentially in the second graph the sources are after conversion, so most of coal goes into electricity. Electricity is not by itself a primary source, and is therefore absent from the first graph which shows primary sources before conversions. --Ita140188 (talk) 02:48, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Ita140188, about 40% of the heat value in coal becomes electricity, that's the source of confusion.Dougmcdonell (talk) 19:10, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

I think much of the confusion could be avoided if we could label the first graph something like "World primary energy supply," and use consistent terms throughout the article. Kendall-K1 (talk) 20:00, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

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Latest report from IEA

I am leaving a note here with the link to IEA's 2015 Key World Energy Statistics. Found it when searching for the citation which needed to be updated. Just in case if it is useful. -- Petorial (talk) 06:54, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Conversion of Total Primary Energy Consumption (TWh) in to Power Generating Capacity (TW)

Ref 10 says that the installed global power/electricity generation capacity is nearly 6.142 TW (million MW) by the end of 2014. Ref 2 says the electricity generated is 23,816 TWh in the year 2014. This works out to 3877 Wh/W or 44.26% capacity factor. No confusion about this data.

The third para of subsection 'Trends' says that total worldwide primary energy consumption was 132,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) or 474 exajoules (EJ) in 2008. This corresponds to an average estimated global power demand of 15 terawatts (TW). In 2012, primary energy demand increased to 158,000 TWh (567 EJ), equivalent to an average estimated power use of 18.0 TW. Here the TW values are arrived by converting the total worldwide primary energy consumption into a notational/imaginary power generating capacity by using 100% capacity factor (8760 Wh/W) in to TW ( TW a unit of power whereas TWh is a unit of energy). 132000÷8760 = 15 TW in 2008. 158000÷8760 = 18 TW in 2012. Similarly the TW data given in the second table is arrived by converting the worldwide primary energy consumption in to TW at 100% capacity factor. These derived figures are not the real installed power generating capacity by the end of a year.

Hardly not more than 25% of total worldwide primary energy consumption is converted in to power/electricity in any year as most of the energy (oil, gas, coal, etc) is directly consumed in transport sector, heating, cooking, etc. Total electricity generated is only Ref 2 23,816 TWh by an installed capacity of 6.142 TW in the year 2014. The earlier years data can not be 4 to 5 times of the latest data. So they are not real data but notional values to give a picture how much worldwide primary energy consumption (TWh) is equal in terms of power generating capacity (TW).

This data is highly miss leading and absurd comparison and worth of deletion. Hope Ita140188 may agree with me.183.82.199.109 (talk) 14:16, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Coal, gas

Coal production and export are given in megatonnes (Mt). But that is a unit of weight, not energy. The energy content (calorific value) of a tonne of coal is not well determined because it depends on how bitumenous the coal is, which differs per country. In the next update, I suggest to use for coal the Mtoe (million tonne oil equivalent) unit instead of Mt. IEA and BP publish coal amounts also in Mtoe.

Similarly, gas production and import are given in billion cubic meters (bcm). That's a unit of volume, not energy. The energy content of a cubic meter of gas depends on its chemical composition, more or less methane. In an article on energy consumption it's better to use tonnes of oil equivalent. It may seem strange to express amounts of coal or gas in toe based on oil, but the point is to use the energy unit which is now, in a time in which Big Oil dominates the market, is the toe. This unit is easily converted to GWh or PJ when time changes. Maybe tonne of hydrogen equivalent (tHe). Rwbest (talk) 10:19, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

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Commas and period as group separators.

Employing commas as thousands separators is ambiguous and generates confusion, it is better to use spaces. In my opinion, commas should be replaced by white spaces. For example "The total amount of electricity consumed worldwide was 19,504 TWh in 2013" can be read as ~20 TWh or ~20 PWh. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.65.19.46 (talk) 11:29, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Actually, not in English. Commas are unambiguously used as thousands separator, as opposed to Italian where they are used instead of the dot. --Ita140188 (talk) 23:57, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Period as digit separator is common pratice in eu and other countries, not only in italy. Anyway, as for "Decimal separator" from en.wiki, this usage difference may lead to ambiguous intepretations. Since en.wiki is a global reference work, I think, should use blank spaces instead of commas.