What you can do for your country

Carbon Facts

Just as there are interesting energy facts, there are interesting Carbon facts.  Efforts to reduce ones carbon footprint can at times actually increase carbon footprint.  The term "Life Cycle Assessment" is used to characterize the process of looking at all the inputs (and their CO2 emissions) for the design, manufacture, delivery and operation of a product.  The Life Cycle story on Green products exposes some unintended consequences.

• It takes 18 years of use to make up for the carbon output of producing, delivering and installing a solar cell (Source: An industry conference - so is this an urban myth)  (This also depends on location)

Energy Facts

In the debate on energy, I keep hearing bigger and bigger numbers of what is wrong, how bad it will get, how much money goes over seas, etc.  It feels like after Katrina - "10K People are dead".  I think we may all be better served with facts to help measure our progress and focus our attention with respect to energy security and CO2 emissions.  (If I get any of this wrong, please comment with a source an I will correct it)  So, here we go.....

• The United States Consumes 20.7MMbd (Million Barrels per day) of Oil  EIA 2006
• The United States Imports 13.7 MMbd of Oil  EIA 2006

• The United States Exports 1.3 MMbd of Oil EIA 2006
• The Middle East represents 16% of US imports, which makes it about 10% (60% * 16%) of our domestic oil usage.  Iraq and Saudi Arabia are the majority of those supply the United states in from the Middle East  EIA 2006

• Growth in demand for oil in the US has been essentially consistent since the 80's, with no apparent change in growth regardless of political party in power.  There was a major decline during the tail end of the Carter administration and first half of the Reagan administration (coincident with economic down turn).  Reduction during the first gulf war.  Some reduction at the beginning of the recent bush administration.  EIA 2006   

 

Import oil growth during last 5 presidents (EIA 2006)
	President	Overall Growth	Average Growth/Year
	Carter	-34.2%	-8.5%
	Reagan	+18.2%	2.3%
	Bush 1	-3.5%	-0.9%
	Clinton	+27.1%	+3.5%
	Bush 2	+9.5%	+1.4%

CO2 Emissions growth during last 5 presidents (EIA 2006)
	President	Overall Growth	Average Growth/Year
	Carter	-0.5%	-0.1%
	Reagan	+6.9%	0.9%
	Bush 1	-0.16%	-0.04%
	Clinton	+11.6%	+1.5%
	Bush 2	+2.4%	+0.4%