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Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Corollary: the biggest impacts to energy consumption lie in land use and building code changes, secondarily in consumption habits.

See LLNL's 2018 energy flow chart:

https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/energy/us/... (PDF: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/2018_United-...)

Of 101 quads, 28 go to transport. Industrial use. is dominated by relatively clean natural gas (methane), with a large chunk likely being ammonia and other chemical production (I'd like to see breakouts).

Dense and local-first construction enables public. transit, walking and cycling, localised services, shared facilities, and numerous other mechanisms of increased efficience

Denser residential spaces and more cimate-appropriate construction hugely reduces

View on HN

To anyone else wondering what's meant by "rejected energy":

https://energycultures.org/2014/07/rejected-energy-much-ener...

hugely reduces... ? can you please complete your message?

Also, do you mean that places like Japan, or the central, older parts of European cities are more efficient?

He's taken by CIA

Apologies: hugely reduces per capita and total energy budgets.

Flow chart is really cool!

I wonder what the biomass used for transportation is?

Ethanol produced from biomass mixed into gasoline or diesel.

It doesn't seem quite the same, but your comment strongly reminded me of https://www.econlib.org/an-epic-example-of-wealth-destructio... .

That article comes so close to defeating its own argument it's painful. If that land wasn't protected with zoning, it would have been built up long ago into a typical sprawling suburbia – the opposite of what they propose. So if it had been unprotected in the past, that would have been bad. And if it stays protected that's bad because it's underused.

It is only this short sliver of time that is today that this land should be developed into their dream city. That will somehow miraculously withstand the test of time.

No, it won't, that's just greed and narcissism – thinking that we're so special today that we deserve to have that land unprotected for us but doing that for either future or past generations is a mistake.

Perhaps I shouldn't speak for Scott Sumner, but I feel pretty sure he wouldn't recognize your opinion of what he supposedly thinks.

If you make your comment at econlib, he's not unlikely to respond.

My comment is a critique of the content of his article, not an "opinion of what he supposedly thinks" in need of his recognition.

If "thinking that" are trigger words now, replace it with "acting as if" to same effect.

Your comment is a critique of a lot of content you read into his article without the formality of it actually being there.

What regulation prevents that from being built?

[Edit] The Williamson Act? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamson_Act) "The Williamson Act of the US state of California (officially, the California Land Conservation Act of 1965) is a California law that provides relief of property tax to owners of farmland and open-space land in exchange for a ten-year agreement that the land will not be developed or otherwise converted to another use."

"The property is under the Williamson Act, meaning the land will not be developed or otherwise converted to another use for a number of years." (https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article23239941...)

That flowchart is super-terrific; thanks for sharing it!

LLNL have produced these since the early 1970s, with both retrospective estimates to the to the 1950s and forecasts through 2000, created ~1975 (actual usage is well below forecast).

Archives online at the link or its parent.

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