Actually, over nearly the past two decades, in the US, it has been the opposite of a “consistent trend of dropping energy security.” Considered like a trade balance, since 2019 the net energy balance in the US is positive.
Down ~20% from peak. That is not a country drowning in cheap energy, that is a coming under a lot of pressure. Not a time to be going "eh, long term trends take a while to kick in". The long term trends have been around for a while, we're well in to the part where we start reaching tipping points and step changes.
What is going to happen? Who knows. But it could happen quite quickly.
I can imagine how that could be a second order effect of energy insecurity, but there are other explanations that seem more likely, like:
* The move from incandescent to LED lighting
* Improved insulation and heating technology
* Energy efficient appliances
* Removal of inefficient vehicles in favor of more efficient vehicles
You're going to have to do better than "per capita energy use is dropping" to convince me there's a looming threat to US energy supplies.
20% is like having no energy on half of Saturday and all of Sunday. The improvements you listed are not comparable.
On average, we have cheap power [1]. If you're power hungry, we have some of the cheapest power on the planet [2].
The fact that coal-burning China pays more for power [3] than American industry should drive home our massive geostrategic advantage.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...
[2] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/end-use.php
[3] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/
And the US having access cheap oil is a good argument for why there might be a sudden step change in their economy - there are a lot of people with a serious interest in breaking the US dollar oil trade. Now including Russia and possibly China if they can read the writing on the wall. The US can't fight them both at once so China is in a pretty good position to get away with stuff right now if their regime survives COVID.
Cheap oil in the US has been extinct for more than a decade.
America produces more oil than ever [1]. (We also produce more energy than we consume [2].)
Your argument that waste equals production is flawed because energy doesn’t turn into production at a fixed rate [3]. The fact that per capita energy intensity falls while per capita real production rises means the economy is becoming more efficient.
> cheap oil in the US has been extinct for more than a decade
American crude is among the cheapest in the world [4]. (Bonus: look at Canadian and Mexican crude prices. Cheaper still.) Production costs aren’t Arab, but it’s way cheaper than what China pays, even before transport [5].
What makes this fantasy particularly stupid, beyond being trivially fact checkable, is that it mistakes China’s strategic weakness for America’s. The weakness that pushed Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor: their energy comes in from abroad, mostly by sea. The United States can strangle their economy from thousands of miles away by interfering with their shipments of seaborne coal and crude.
This is why the South China Sea is militarising. This is where Belt & Road comes from. The Russia dependency. It makes sense. It’s a weakness Beijing is working to buttress. One which America doesn’t suffer from on account of its geography and geology.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/crude-oil-product...
[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity
[4] https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/
[5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/748207/breakeven-prices-...
It is hard to say exactly what that entails. Maybe the world gets lucky with a fission/fusion breakthrough of some sort - maybe even a political breakthrough to let us use proven-good nuclear tech. But in the interim it isn't easy to say that the US stock market will mirror its performance in an era where it had unchallenged dominance of a global network of easily available oil shipments. And it certainly isn't safe to say things will happen slowly. Things could start breaking and move quickly.
You keep saying this despite it being wrong. America hasn’t run out of cheap oil. Americans pay less for oil because we produce oil cheaper than most others, and that will be true relative to e.g. China for fundamental, structural reasons. All while the economy uses less oil [1], year after year, per person and unit of production. (Adjusted for inflation, WTI is about where it was in the 1980s, and lower than it was in the 1970s and most of last decade [2].)
Unless your argument is now peak oil. That we’re running out of oil, as a planet, i.e. that oil will cost more as we extract less. Something we’ve known for decades and are actively re-structuring our economy for. If that’s the case, then your comparisons to Southeast Asia don’t make sense—they pay more for oil, are less productive with it and thus will experience price increases more painfully than America will.
> Domestic consumption of energy showing signs of serious stress
This is a brand new plot point that is also entirely wrong. Total energy consumption is at an all-time high [3]. We’ve even recovered from the pandemic [4].
[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...
[2] https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices...
[3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/
[4] https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/energy-environment/
2. Just a few hours ago you referenced a link [0] showing that China has electricity prices sitting at half the US's. India too.
The US has lost access to a cheap form of energy and is likely going to be forced to rely on electricity going forward. I put it to you that it is by no means certain that the US market is going to be in a position where it can sustain even relative out-performance, let alone objectively good performance in line with historic figures. Depending on how optimistic we are about the communists continuing to adopt sane policies, it may even be unlikely based on the current trends.
Fortunately those trends will likely change as the squeeze the US is going through right now gets more pronounced. But the conditions we see now are simply not the conditions of the past 60 years, putting strategies based on the last ~150 years of data into a suspect light.
> America hasn’t run out of cheap oil ... all while the economy uses less oil, year after year
So cheap you can't afford to use it? I don't want to be exposed to your version of cheap.
[0] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/
Why would I? Everyone knows this. It’s just not a catastrophe for America.
> few hours ago you referenced a link [0] showing that China has electricity prices sitting at half the US's. India too
How did you misread “China pays more for power than American industry” as China pays less?! Look at the national price for business in China. Now look at our states’ industrial prices. Lots of variation, because e.g. New York has different policy preferences than Texas.
> US has lost access to a cheap form of energy and is likely going to be forced to rely on electricity going forward. I put it to you that it is by no means certain that the US market is going to be in a position where it can sustain even relative out-performance
This is a real argument. Thank you.
I agree it’s uncertain. The point, however, is that this won’t happen to America in a vacuum. And as it happens, it hurts others worse and first. I’d also challenge the assumption that we’re out of cheap energy [1], but that’s a separate discussion. My point is that in a world running out of oil, nobody is better positioned than America, with its domestic reserves, co-located industry and cheap electricity.
> cheap you can't afford to use it
You really can’t think of another reason we won’t use our fossil fuels?
Hint: it’s the same reason Chinese and Indian power prices are anomalously close to America’s.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc...
I don't see individual states.
> You really can’t think of another reason we won’t use our fossil fuels?
The price rockets upwards and people start using less of the stuff. There are a lot of possible explanations beyond that, but it is safe to assume the obvious one that is most likely.
I'm sure you already know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox but I'll link to it anyway.
> price rockets upwards
Again, where is this happening? I’ve provided numerous data points refuting this faulty hypothesis, yet you keep circling back to it.
Across the West, fossil fuels are being shifted away from for environmental reasons. India and China burn coal. That’s why Indian and Chinese power prices are even in America’s ballpark. Surprisingly, we’re finding some of the new generation methods, e.g. wind but increasingly also solar, to be even cheaper than coal and oil.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/end-use.php
Then use the national figures. Still cheaper.
And China won’t, not for oil. Oil is cheap in Texas because it’s pumped in Texas. China’s closest analogs are Russian pipeline terminals and seaports. The former, in aggregate, is less than a third of Texas aline’s oil production. The latter vulnerable. (Chinese electricity is cheaper in its mining provinces.)
> seem from the other link you posted that average Chinese business has much better access to electricity than the average US one. India too.
America is ridiculously more electrified than either country, so “better access” is the wrong phrase. I think you mean cheaper?
Short answer, mostly no. New York City adds power tariffs because they don’t want power-intensive industry in the city. If you’re doing energy-intensive work, you go upstate, where the tariffs are intentionally cheaper.
Will a shop in San Francisco pay more for power than one in Delhi? Sure. But now the energy intensity comes back to bite, because that shop in San Francisco is doing a better job turning energy into production. That means the fraction of income going towards power is smaller.
In any case, those are policies voters chose to impose on themselves. They could any day choose to prioritise cheaper power over environmental concerns and pay what Wyoming does. We’re comparing retail prices, after all, not generation costs.
How are you getting from that to "China pays more for power than American industry"? Could you do a summary in one place? Your links seems to support the opposite conclusion but maybe you've got something going on across a few comments that I've missed.
I also went to look at the absolute numbers out of interest and China produces 8 PWh total and the US 4 PWh total according to [2] and playing around with the "Electricity production by source" graph. Although obviously that means per-capita the US is still a way ahead.
[0] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/ & https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/end-use.php
The median American pays more for everything than the median Chinese. Including power. For electricity, particularly for households, the difference is largely taxes.
The median kWh purchased in America, however, is bought for less than it is in China because power-hungry industry happens where it is cheap. This cost difference is partly because China underproduces energy by a third [1]. It’s partly because we make power more cheaply [2]. The first gives us security. The second economic advantage. (It’s also why ditching coal and oil is easier for America than it currently is for China.)
Also, fun fact: electricity is getting cheaper in America, and has been for at least forty years [3]. (Those are household figures. No ready source for industry, but same tale, you can deflate historic prices using the PPI.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_p...
[2] https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
[3] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/electricity-...
Energy security is not about how much energy we do spend, but rather about how much energy we could spend, if we wanted. On this count, OP is right and the situation is still better than it used to be.