Texas Uses More Energy Than Any Other State | Hacker News Reader

Texas Uses More Energy Than Any Other State

texasmonthly.com

90 pointssremani136 comments

Texas has 29 million people.

Texas is big, and is very dependent (unfortunately) on private transportation. Lots of cars, lots of roads, lots of lanes.

Texas is freaking hot for 5 months of the year. Texas can get surprisingly damned cold for 4 months of the year in some heavily populated parts (Dallas/Fort Worth for example). Texas uses heating and air conditioning because it can.

Texas pumps a lot of oil and gas. Texas has a lot of windy areas, some of which now have large wind farms. Texas could have a lot of solar, but I'm not sure how that's developing.

Point is, it's about as reasonable a metric as the frequently (stupidly) promoted articles talking about "the most stolen car". Per capita, and per capita per day per degree of climate outside comfort range, and on top of that, per mile of distance between homes and offices, I imagine Texas is not out of line.

Yeah. Grew up in California. Large swathes of homes in California don't even have an AC. Whereas have family in Houston and their summers are brutally hot and humid. Couple that with the fact that Texas seems to have more energy intense chemical, and related, industries and to me it's not surprising that Texas uses more energy than California.

Grew up in coastal SoCal, and I'm still here. The houses here weren't even built with insulation. That said, climate change has been making it worse here. >90°F (>32°C) temps used to be extremely rare when I was growing up, but last year we hit the century mark a few days (~38°C). Obligatory: can't for sure blame AGW but more extreme events are likely.

Just installed the window-mounted air conditioners today for this summer, because of the Texas-like combination of heat and humidity today finally made it uncomfortable.

That said, don't discount California's efficiency rules and culture in our lower energy use, either. Or the fact that urban density is higher here so you don't lose as much energy to transportation.

First paragraph reminds me of what I read on Australia, uninsulated houses and slatted surface seem very common there as well.

I grew up in Virgina without air conditioning. Living in coastal California now, summers are actually nice, but you won't die in most parts of the South without AC.

Have you been to parts of the south other than VA? I spent summers in FL and it's tolerable but many of the other states aren't.

Georgia is incredibly hot and humid for much of the year and while you won't die from it, you might just lay in a pool of your own bodily fluids wishing you were. The same can be said for South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi.

Heat index in northern VA was 105 a few weeks ago.

You might not die but you might want to.

More than half of the energy consumed in Texas is for industrial use, according to the EIA, while residential use—which in terms of sheer BTUs is the most in the nation, even as our per capita usage is relatively low—accounts for just over 13 percent.

but does 'industrial use' count office AC?

No, office AC is commercial. The energy reporting used here is to group it into residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation. Residential is houses and apartments. Commercial is stores, office buildings, theaters, etc. Industrial is factories, refineries, ports, mines, oil rigs, etc. Transportation is well, transportation. The article breaks down Texas's usage as: industrial >50%, transportation ~25%, residential 13%, commercial ~10%.

Which makes it odd that most of the discussion here is about climate and residential and commercial AC, neither of which are particularly significant factors. What's using most of Texas's energy are the chemical plants and refineries.

Texas is not the largest or the most populous or the most climatically challenged state. For a place that loves superlatives, it doesn't have those justifications for its energy use. They're sucking all the oxygen out of the room in more ways than one.

Texas is not only a net exporter of energy [1], it is the top energy producing state and 6th in consumption per capita [2]. It produces 41% more energy than it consumes. Is that justification enough?

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32272

[2] https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=TX

No. How are they producing it?

no because that energy is fossil fuel based

"Texas accounted for the largest total amount of wind and solar generation in the United States in 2016" [1]

[1] https://thinkprogress.org/renewable-energy-just-passed-a-maj...

It's the second most populous state and unlike the first most populous state, is very climatically challenged.

That's a moronic statement.

Texas is the second largest state by land mass.

Texas is the second largest state by population.

Texas has 3 of the most populous cities in the country.

Texas has the 2nd largest port in the country.

Texas is the 4th hottest state.

Texas has the 2 largest refineries in the US (refineries use tons of energy to process their feedstock liquids).

Come to Houston and live thru June, July, August, September, or even October without your AC running almost constantly. Seriously. You'll be better educated from the experience.

The largest and most climatically challenged state is Alaska. But their population of 742,000 people (more than _one_ per square mile!) can only burn so much energy.

It all interacts. Being top of a single metric (I wouldn't be at all surprised if the inhabited part of Texas is larger than the inhabited part of Alaska) is pretty meaningless.

If we use some less "straw" metric than yours we can get meaningful comparisons. Let's try something like degree days * population and do the comparison. Let's try industrial output per BTU or KW-H. Let's try energy produced vs energy consumed.

Point is, conversation is more informatve if one isn't trying to make some kind of political shot just because one doesn't like Texas or Texans.

> They're sucking all the oxygen out of the room in more ways than one.

That's rude, please stop it.

But it is the largest and most populated state which is also "climatically challenged".

"For a place that loves superlatives, it doesn't have those justifications for its energy use."

Native Texan here, that's a load if one was ever spouted. We have plenty of climate challenges, from huge droughts just like what California recently broke out of (we broke out of our own three years earlier) to nasty winters (I've had snow on my birthday in summer) to we're sitting smack on the tail end of Tornado Alley, we've got the largest Gulf Coast area which has had hellaciously bad storms (1900 Galveston Cat 4 anyone) even with massive jettys and breaks. Houston is one of the worst-polluted area in the country as far as air quality goes, Los Angeles air is cleaner! Oh, then we've got wildfires much like California!

The energy expenditure alone on rebuilding places hit by tornadoes is one you aren't ever seeing come out of New York.

Did you know in Texas that they fly helicopters over your property in order to assess tax value? Imagine the energy expenditure there.

I can tell you don't live in Texas.

That it's so car dependent is entirely a choice though, not some inherent feature of geography.

Could you elaborate on why you think it's entirely a choice? You seem to be implying that the choice to be (or not be) car dependent in Texas and the choice to be (or not be) car dependent in a state like Pennsylvania (for example) are equivalent.

I mean it's a choice in terms of transportation planning at the state/regional/local levels, obviously for individuals it's not really much of a choice.

Individuals would have the choice if their state government made the choice to make public transportation a priority over the less efficient, more damaging, "everyone should just gas up every day" model of industry.

Alas, that choice is not on the table, because the very powerful Texas energy monopolies would never allow public transportation to become a thing, nor would they allow cities to be designed to be anything less than a haven for car users.

Texas is massive. Dallas and Houston are four hours apart by car. There's an Amtrak route and you can also take a bus.

There is no Amtrak route between Dallas and Houston. I wish there was, as I would've taken it on several occasions (even if it were slow), but there isn't.

FWIW, I've been doing LA <--> SF many times a year for over a decade and I haven't taken Amtrak _once_. Every time I've checked, it's been a 12+ hour trip due to a long stop in Santa Barbara. It's not functionally an option to travel between LA and SF when you can pay pretty much the same amt and fly in a quarter of the time door to door.

Yeah, SF-LA is slow, though that's also a lot longer route to begin with. LA-SF via the coast (which is what Amtrak does) is 420 miles, and goes through some mountainous terrain with a lot of curves. Houston-Dallas is only 240 miles and flat. There used to be train service on the route that took about 6 hours, but it was discontinued in the 1970s.

One place in California where I do find Amtrak convenient is San Diego to LA. It's a 3-hour trip by train, which is roughly what it takes to drive on average, and a lot less frustrating (driving can take anywhere from 2 to 5 hours depending on traffic).

Yes, and Los Angeles and San Francisco are five hours apart. Most people don't drive those on a regular basis though, as I'm sure is the case for Texas.

Driving between Houston and Dallas is a lot easier than LA to SF. Far, far fewer bottlenecks along the way.

Coastal Texas is hotter during the day and at night than the Congo in June, July, August, and September. You will die without air conditioning. Easy to get heat stroke just walking down the side walk for 15 minutes.

they even make note of Texas fairing pretty middle of the pack on a per capita basis. if they normalized for some sort of temperature metric I'm sure Texas is very average - weather in the state is brutal at both ends of the year.

> weather in the state is brutal at both ends of the year.

It should be mentioned, though, that the remedy to the brutal summers can be just as brutal. I'm sure that I'm not the only person who expects summer colds because of constant transitions from the sweltering-hot outdoors to the icy-cold air-conditioned tundras that every business maintains.

(Also, I'm sure parts of Texas get severe winters, but I've never seen one in Fort Worth. (Or did you mean something different by 'both ends'?) The main thing that I see here is that houses are built with no effective insulation, so that, during the winter, a perfectly manageable temperature outside can render the inside frigid.)

EDIT: I'm sorry for downvote whining, but, just to be clear, this isn't just a "the weather, amirite?" post; while I agree that living in Texas without AC is probably unbearable, I also think that there's no need to crank ACs to the levels at which businesses (and buses!) set them, and I can't imagine that this aggressive cooling doesn't have a significant energy impact.

I know that I walked into my sons high school during the summer to visit the office (DFW) and the whole school was so cold that the admins where wearing sweaters and long pants. This is a massive high school for 3000 plus students, 4 Gyms, etc. I can't imagine what it costs to cool it and the extra expense of keeping that cold when no one is there.

I agree with you that homes in Texas are insulated very poorly. Interesting enough Demilic is headquartered in Grand Prairie and is one of that largest suppliers of spray foam in the country. With the heat in the summers and some of the cold spells in the winter you would think they would have a better building code.

It seems the strategy is to find cheaper sources of power while not making an effort to build better buildings to save power.

This isn't snark: building codes are regulation and Texas is an independence-loving state, even when that isn't particularly sensible or doesn't lead to good outcomes for life in general.

Mandating better insulation in homes might add a little up-front cost. It'd also do wonders for energy consumption.

Let people choose, they might say--well, housing is a good situation where you might not really have any choice at all (if no one's building houses with proper insulation), or be well-informed enough to make an informed choice, or whatever, and that's exactly the place where regulation is a net benefit for the society in question.

Schools are notorious for lowest bidder construction without a thought about operating costs. I saw one building that ran ac and heated the cold air up to the desired temperature. Stupid. But cheap to build.

They probably don't have sophisticated control systems in place to partially shut down the AC on the campus. If it's like my modern LEED certified office building once 7PM hits it gets pretty hot.

Transitions between hot and cold temperatures don't cause colds. Cold viruses cause colds.

You get summer colds because more people congregate in close quarters when the weather outside is unbearable, making virus transmission easier.

Transitions between hot and cold temperatures cause runny noses, and runny noses cause nose touching - which does cause colds.

Yeah, fully agree about the aggressive cooling. This has been studied: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/science/chilly-at-work-a-... (this article links to the actual study).

I grew up in Houston - until the last decade or so there has always been one cold as hell month during the year. I remember Februaries where the high temp during the entire month was in the 30s.

my point being that you have to condition your air pretty much year round if you live north of Galveston, unfortunately.

Humans should really stop living in stupid places if they need to cause climate change to do so

Canada apparently has pretty high per capita energy use for the same sorts of reasons: big and in their case insanely cold half the year.

so the excuse of an inefficient state is that it is inefficient?

  California, whose population is 12 million higher than ours,
  uses only 60 percent of the energy we do

This is sometimes called the Rosenfeld Effect for the long-time member of the California Energy Commission who pioneered energy efficiency standards, Dr. Arthur Rosenfeld.

Here's a great interview with Rosenfeld upon his retirement from the commission, "Art Rosenfeld, the 'godfather' of energy efficiency",

  http://www.mercurynews.com/2009/12/23/art-rosenfeld-the-godfather-of-energy-efficiency/

There's also a Wikipedia article for Rosenfeld Effect,

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld_Effect

There are disputes about how effective California's strict energy efficiency standards have been. But the Mercury News article is a great read simply because Rosenfeld seemed to have been a great scientist who left lasting impressions with all the people he worked with, not to mention on our laws and standards. He passed away at the beginning of this year.

There is something else going on, Texas home energy usage only accounts for about 1/8 of their total so even eliminating home usage (and commercial, too) would still leave a large difference. Maybe the cheaper gas probably insulates drivers from the costs of poor fuel efficiency and this lets people choose long commutes in spite of the driving time, and the laxer industrial standards encourages a concentration of some processes like the chemical plants in East Texas.

poor city planning and urban sprawl contribute far more to fuel consumption than low gas prices. See Los Angeles.

> See Los Angeles.

See what? Los Angeles -- whether you slice by city, county, metropolitan statistical area, or combined statistical area -- ranks nowhere near the top of per capita household vehicle miles in the United States. In fact, the Los Angeles-Long Beach combined statistical area has the second-lowest household fuel consumption in the country, just behind New York-Newark (at least according to a poorly-sourced Forbes article [1]).

Unfortunately, publicly available fuel consumption data split by city/county/Census area is much harder to find. But what I have found suggests that Forbes's ranking of Los Angeles relative to other US metro areas is probably accurate. The National Household Travel Survey [2] is likely the best source of raw data for investigating this question.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/05/10/am...

[2]: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/su...

> Los Angeles -- whether you slice by city, county, metropolitan statistical area, or combined statistical area -- ranks nowhere near the top of per capita household vehicle miles in the United States. In fact, the Los Angeles-Long Beach combined statistical area has the second-lowest household fuel consumption in the country, just behind New York-Newark (at least according to a poorly-sourced Forbes article [1]).

Wow, thanks for the info. As someone born and raised in LA, I never would've guessed this.

> ranks nowhere near the top of per capita household vehicle miles

It's not about miles covered, it's about energy consumed.

100 miles on the freeway would use the same amount of fuel as 30 miles in the city with traffic.

But low gas prices are a cause of sprawl. If gas was more expensive it would change the economics of commuting.

No it wouldn't.

Gas is about 2x as expensive in the UK. I work in London but commute (by motorcycle) from the next county.

Plenty of people commute by car even though it's considerably more expensive.

Plus we Texans "all" own V-8 pickup trucks.

Nah, only the city folks. Us country bumpkins have straight 6 diesels.

Whats wrong with a V-6?

The main divergence between California and the rest of the US is around the time of Rosenfeld's work... but also the same time as mass adoption of AC. Since half of California has a cooler coastal climate (such as the Bay Area) AC is not nearly as prevalent as almost any other state that experiences a typical hot summer.

Estimates of the impact of this climate seem to claim the majority of the 'energy efficiency' gains claimed by Rosenfeld.

He still did great work, just lets ensure we have the right features in our mental models.

I always wonder how these sort of things square away with Jeveron's Paradox [1]. To me, a stable energy/capita isn't prima-facie evidence that they are more efficient! It suggests prices are higher than they should be.

I dunno, maybe I've misunderstood what energy efficiency is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

EDIT:

http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/california/ & using electricity price as an energy price proxy - average residential use is ~30% reduced vs national average, and rate is ~30% higher. I'd believe the "Rosenfeld Effect" is the key to per-capita use if it is the factor keeping these costs relatively high.

> To me, a stable energy/capita isn't prima-facie evidence that they are more efficient! It suggests prices are higher than they should be.

TL;DR: If I'm understanding you correctly, you're holding up Jevon's paradox as something that we should _aim_ for? Why?

It's not clear to me how you came to this conclusion. Jevon's paradox isn't prescriptive: how do you conclude what energy usage growth (and thus prices) _should_ be? If anything, most policy experts are defining the goal as decreasing the rate of growth of energy growth (ceterus paribus), which means that stable energy/capita is a good thing, not that usage growth is lower than it should be.

Clickable links:

http://www.mercurynews.com/2009/12/23/art-rosenfeld-the-godf...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld_Effect

Dunno if it is just Firefox, but at least for me having the urls in block quotes makes them unclickable.

double or tripleclick, rightclick, open works in firefox

As a side note, there may actually be more datacenter space in Texas than there is in California. I wish I could find accurate statistics on this to prove it either way, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Disclaimer: It's rare my day job actually intersects with HN even though I'm in the Internet industry.

I'm 99% sure you're right. I ran a dedicated server/colo hosting company for 6 years. Texas is favored for the following reasons:

Cheaper energy

Cheaper real estate

No earthquake retrofitting of datacenters

Low ping times to Midwest vs. California

Cheaper employees; less biz liability insurance required

No state income tax

Honestly, many of these are the same reasons I ended up moving to Texas after I sold my hosting company (which was based in San Jose.) I run a business here now with 15 employees and it's significantly cheaper to run it here vs. California. As a side benefit, I can also afford to own a nice house with a yard my daughter and dog can play in in a great area of Austin for about 1/5 of what it would cost in San Jose.

No earthquake retrofitting yet... the Barnett Shale largely sits below Dallas/Fort Worth, and there's a lot of data center storage in the DFW area. That area is already becoming more seismically active.

Plano (ie tons of corporate-managed DCs) and San Antonio (ie Rackspace and so on) have tons of massive DCs.

> Low ping times to Midwest vs. California

Why is reaching the Midwest so important?

In particular, the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA and the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land MSA are the 4th and 5th largest in the USA, are the fastest growing in the nation, and combined are about as big as the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA (which is #2).

The Chicago market (which is also very well served by Texas due to an almost direct link to DFW's Infomart, but also has a strong DC market) is the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin MSA, and is #3 on the list, and is slightly larger than Dallas and Houston's MSAs.

The three combined are 23.5 million people, and just the 3 biggest metros to note, and about a third of the people covered in the midwest. California's ping and the ping from DCs serving the Northeast (NYC MSA is #1, DC/MD/VA MSA is #6, PA/NJ-outside-of-NYC MSA is #7, Boston-Cambridge MSA is #10) is just too high for a lot of use cases.

I dunno about you, but I'm not going to tell about a third of the US population I can't serve them. There is a United States outside of California and NYC.

Edit: For completion's sake, #8 is Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, #9 is Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell (which both of those also are served decently by DFW, but also by DCs in VA) and the 10 largest MSAs together is about 85 million people, or about 26% of the US's population.

> Why is reaching the Midwest so important?

Because it has $3.5 trillion in GDP, and a $55,000 GDP per capita. That's larger than the economy of Germany, with a 40% higher GDP per capita. It's nearly equivalent to the combined economies of France and Russia.

To my knowledge DFW has multiple data centers, Facebook @ Ft.Worth being most famous among them. Not sure, if Toyota already built their Datacenter in Plano.

Digital Realty and Equinix both have multiple huge datacenters, the Informart[1] houses several gigantic datacenters inside of one building (it's mind boggling how utterly big it is), Internap has an absolutely gigantic facility there, Rackspace has I think their biggest facility here, and then there's a smattering of smaller datacenters (in and out of the Infomart) owned by every major player.

There's so much space here that most companies have only recently started chasing after highly dense stuff (like 60+ drive arrays in 4U, hyper-dense blades, etc) because there just is no need to.

And as a side note, Texas now operates the largest number of wind turbines (by MW) and I think per capita as well. Texas now generates so much power that they regularly sell it to nearby states because the whole "long term storage" problem hasn't been solved at the scale Texas needs it to be...

Which means not only is datacenter space plentiful, the power is often less expensive than it is in other markets.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infomart

Northeast of Dallas, I know of at least 2 being built, and I suspect at least 3 others. I'm sure there are many, many more.

RagingWire is possibly the largest single company building a single campus/facility at the moment[0], and only about 2 miles from my house. It's quite impressive when you drive by and see the utterly massive power substation they built across the street too.

While the Telecom Corridor[1] name is somewhat dated, it's still growing.

[0]: http://www.ragingwire.com/wholesale/wholesale-data-center-da...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecom_Corridor

edit: formatting

There are several data centers that are being built around the Toyota facility in Plano, but none are branded as Toyota data centers - I'm assuming that's what you mean. They aren't online yet.

I'd also add that Softlayer is based in Dallas, and operates several data centers throughout the DFW area.

The T5 Data center near Toyota is operational, but they keep building to expand it. The space is HUGE!

I've always thought the Rackspace data center there was more well known.

Rackspace HQ is is in a former shopping mall outside of San Antonio. Definitely a cool place to tour if you ever get the chance. You can still see where the "stores" were (they're now employee workspaces.)

Less cool place to work. Very, very noisy. Steps were taken to reduce the noise level but it wasn't enough.

Rackspace may be "the original" datacenter for Texas. At least, they're the original data center for the internet age.

Key line:

>More than half of the energy consumed in Texas is for industrial use, according to the EIA, while residential use—which in terms of sheer BTUs is the most in the nation, even as our per capita usage is relatively low—accounts for just over 13 percent.

They included industrial energy consumption and Texas is home to more oil refining than any other state.

I don't buy the climate explanation. Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and much of the north east including New York and New Jersey are all much colder in the winter and have somewhat comparably hot but shorter summers. And yet the per capita numbers for the Texas are much worse than each of these states.

The per capita consumption map clearly shows that red states consume more energy than blue and purple states --- for example, there's a stark difference between Illinois and Indiana. This is clearly a policy problem caused by the Republican party's intentional ignorance of climate change.

Which requires more energy—lowering the temperature by one degree using an AC or increasing the temperature by one degree using a heater?

Here in Texas we have playgrounds with stretched tarps over them. I wonder how much it would help a home energy use to have similar tarps inches above the roof giving the whole structure shade throughout the day.

Where i grew up i knew someone who built a safari roof over their house. (the name comes from the vented double top that was an option on land rovers) They stuck whirlybird vents at the apex with a controllable iris. Adjustable Louvres with seals were placed around the edges of the second roof.

These allowed the venting air to be shut off in winter and opened in summer. giving you great insulation or ventilation. Combined with the many other things they did (vines in front of walls for summer heat blockages, A well populated garden of low water plants, good insulation everywhere, a white painted roof and double glazed windows) meant that for most of the year no active cooling or heating was required.

And this was a place that commonly sees winters with lows of -10 and summers with periods of +35 as the nightly low (daily maxes are +40 for 2 to 3 weeks at a time (Air drying clothes in summer generally took less time than hanging them out. :| ))

Much nicer than the typical house in central Australia.

My wife and I have seriously considered this. It could also be an interesting way to combat hail damage. Unfortunately the HOA would never allow it.

Isn't that basically what an attic is for? It's semi-open to the elements, with lots of ventilation, providing a thermal buffer for the home.

I don't know about anyone else's attic but ours is a holding tank for incredibly hot air during the summer.

Easier to just plant more trees imo. If our governor will allow such a thing to occur...

Or because of time some sort of trellis of fast growing vines. Maybe Mr Burns sun blocker machine

Like others here are saying, a lot of this seems to be commercial rather than residential use so an immediate presumption of profligacy might not be appropriate.

Having said that, I remember years ago being shocked when someone told me that some service stations in Texas actually use airconditioning on their forecourts. Can anyone here confirm whether or not this is just an urban legend?

Texan here, I had to look up "service station" and "forecourt." Been all around the state and never saw A/C at a gas station pump.

Agree. I've never seen this. We pump gas with our cars running... so we can sit in AC until we hear the click. We also love drive thru anything for same reason.

> We pump gas with our cars running

Can an automotive engineer chime in on this? The signs at every gas station and vehicle owner's manual always said this was a big no-no.

You're right, people do it anyway

I am betting somone saw a boxed evap cooler and assumed it was an AC unit when they felt the cool air.

What's Louisana and Wyoming's problem?

Industrial use.

Louisiana [1] has 18 oil refineries, numerous chemical plants, and various other facilities to process oil and natural gas that are produced both in-state and imported from elsewhere. Compared to Texas, which has more oil refineries, Louisiana has a much smaller population, pushing the per capita number higher.

Wyoming [2] expends over 58% of its energy use in the industrial sector, including energy-intensive activities like open-pit and strip coal mining (such as in Powder River Basin), underground mining (e.g. trona, soda ash). It also has six oil refineries. Further, it's located along one of the busiest transcontinental transportation corridors (Union Pacific's Rawlins and Laramie Subs, I-80), and all that Powder River Basin coal also ships out by rail -- transportation consumes another 20%.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=LA [2] https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=WY

Wyoming also has a tiny population. More live people in San Francisco than do in all of Wyoming.

Wyoming leads the nation in coal production, accounting for two-fifths of all coal mined in the United States. (According to EIA) So you have high industrial consumption and low population.

To re-iterate, Seattle proper (not the metro area w/ Bellvue, Tacoma, etc) has a larger population than the state of Wyoming.

Any per-capita comparisons which involve industrial measurements on a statewide basis are going to seem weird for Wyoming.

Is the coal consumed in WY?

Yes, but the vast bulk of it is moved to other states and countries via coal trains and bulk freighters. The state has only 580k citizens but is producing 42% of all US coal.

So no, it's not consumed in WY.

Energy is consumed to mine and transport the coal.

It's not all consumed in WY, but some is.

Most of it isn't. In 2015 Wyoming produced 6,538 trillion BTUs of coal[1], of which, it used 487 trillion BTUs (~7%) [2].

[1] https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WY#tabs-3 [2] https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WY#tabs-1

Respectively, AC and (maybe) low population so static stuff like street lights have higher impact.

I would think climate would make some difference compared to California. I wonder how much though.

Texas is HOT, and humid in parts, with barely a breeze. California in the Northern parts is not that hot, and all of coastal California has a nice ocean breeze keeping things cool.

NorCal gets plenty hot off the coast: https://www.wunderground.com/ndfdimage/viewimage?type=temp&r...

Northern California is not that hot because (with exception of today) it is not humid.

I think you're right. Average annual high temp in Dallas is 77 degrees F. It's 64 for San Francisco. Obviously would need more analysis, but there's certainly much difference between the two northernmost significant cities. Though the article cites mostly industrial use as the difference.

Is average annual high a useful measure here? When the high is around 77° during those amazing couple of weeks in March and October in I never have to turn on the heat or AC. The AC is running all day in July and August though; especially the 50% of days hotter than the average high of 95°.

The 13 degree spread was the interesting part, but only as a quick indicator, not real comparison or analysis.

tl;dr: Texas uses more energy per capita because they've included industrial use and it has a lot of energy intensive industry.

Yep, furthermore, Texas is in the bottom 20% of states in terms of residential energy use per capita (which is pretty remarkable given how ubiquitous and essential AC is there). It's all about industrial use.

DFW and Houston have immense amounts of office space, and office space consumes a ton of climate control electricity.

Houston has warm-to-hot summers and awful high humidity, so AC is absolutely required. DFW has less humidity, but much higher summer temps. AC very much required.

DFW also gets really cold 1-3 months of the year. And maybe it's my limited observations, but I would say the temperature swings have been more extreme in the last decade.

Years ago I lived in Fort Worth in a typical large house. My winter electric heating bill was $450/mo. My summer AC electric bill was $400/mo. The hum of climate control units is constant.

Depending on where you live in Texas, there can be 1-3 weeks of spring or fall where you need little climate control. The rest of the time it's all on.

IIRC AC uses less energy to cool by N degrees than heaters use to heat by N degrees. The climate is in Texas's favor for residential uses.

This is wrong. Heaters have an efficiency of 100%, AC's don't. Energy cannot be created or destroyed.

But it is easier to cool by 4 degrees than heating 40.

Technically, a good heat pump has an "efficiency" of 250% ~ 400%, depending on conditions and such. But a good one will work for both heating and cooling, so that's a wash.

actually you are wrong, heat pumps (air conditioners) typically have a coefficient of performance that is greater than 1. this means that they move more heat energy from the cold side to the hot side than they consume in moving the energy. this is possible because they are just moving the heat energy around, they aren't creating or destroying it.

http://www.powerknot.com/2011/03/01/cops-eers-and-seers/

Low humidity + minimal need for winter heating makes a huge difference.

Low humidity compared to where?

Average yearly relative humidity[1] :

 	Houston:
 	75% daily 
	90% morning 
	55% afternoon

In the summer, the heat is much more unbearable in Texas than let's say Arizona due to the high humidity rates. Every year, 97 days in Houston with Apparent temperature above 95°F due to humidity (vs. only 16 days per year where Actual temperature is above 95°F)[2]

[1] https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Texas/humidity-annual...

[2] https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Texas/hot-humid-days-...

Texas is a lot more than just Houston. Further, you want around 30-45% and AC only removes excess humity not 100% humidity. Also, it's summer and the second number that really matters so by comparison:

  July:
  San Antonio	44 (ok)
  Houston	55 (+10)
  Fort Worth	42 (ok)
  vs.
  Orlando	64 (+19)
  New Orleans	66 (+21)

https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Louisiana/humidity-ju...

https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Florida/humidity-july...

PS: Your AC lower air temp below your target room temp, and extracts water because that air is limited to 100% humidity. The air is then heated by your house which is how relative humidity drops. Aka they don't extract anything at 20% humidity and they extract everything over some % that varies based on outside temp.

Low humidity in Texas?

Maybe El Paso, but the rest of the state is pretty humid unless you compare it to Florida or Georgia et al.

El Paso is definitely dry -- no doubt about that. When my nieces visited from El Paso, they complained about how hot it was here in Florida. They didn't believe that it was technically 10°F cooler here until we pulled up the weather page.

But yes, I generally think that people forget that most of the Texas population lives within the effects of the Gulf of Mexico. It's fun watching the transition from green to brown when flying.

North Texas (Dallas, Ft. Worth, etc.) get pretty cold during the winter. I've spent a fair amount of time in North and Central Texas and while high AC bills during the summer (i.e., mid-April to early October) are common, the single highest electric bill I've ever had was one January in North Texas when I was living in an apartment with an electric heater.

besides efficiency of cooling the temperature difference between what is comfortable versus what it is outside is narrower for cooling, throw in the as humans we can adjust easier to hotter climates than cooler.

there was a recent study where they examined over seventy million deaths attributed to temperature showed a 17 to 1 ratio with cold versus heat related.

On the note of data centers, Dallas is a great host for East Coast businesses as well.

It would be interesting to go back to the 50's and see the move in energy usage. I have a feeling that Detroit in its heyday was a pretty big user compared to non-industrial states.

They also have their own electric grid, separate from other major interstate grids.

That doesn't really affect energy usage though.

The Texas grid is separate due to a combination of just wanting to be independent and geography.

Back in the early days of the grid there was little reason to join the growing national grids because of the remoteness of Texas from the other population centers (transmission is expensive and in the early days inefficient) and abundant natural resources that could be used for generating electricity in the region. Before oil it was coal (and there's still a few plants in Texas using local peat coal, but fewer every year). Then oil, and natural gas. Now wind and solar are the new up and coming sources. Natural gas will be with us for awhile -- it's a handy fuel for generating electricity. It still produces CO2 (but less than coal), but can be spun up and down quickly to meet demand, something coal and nuclear aren't so good at.

We're not totally separate, though -- we have 5 DC ties to the other grids. As I write this looks like we're sending out about 350 MWh. Still, those ties are tiny compared to the current load of 59343 MWh.

There are good reasons we prefer to control our own power supply to some extent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

;)

Of course that was the fault of Texans.

That makes sense. Loads of people, lots of area, gets really hot.

Wow, Texas is using more energy than the state of China?

I bet Guangdong uses more energy. Maybe the title should be changed to "any other state in the US"?

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