Today is Monday, 22 July 2024.
The latest June 2024 edition of the Monthly Energy Review by the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) was just released.
This close-to-300-pages (!) report, usually known as MER, is the primary source of U.S. energy statistics: energy production, consumption, stocks, trade, and energy prices; overviews of petroleum, natural gas, coal, electricity, nuclear energy, and renewable energy; carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions; and data unit conversions.
A fertile source for data scientists, MER has the following structure of sections:
Energy Overview
Energy Consumption by Sector
Petroleum
Natural Gas
Crude Oil and Natural Gas Resource Development
Coal
Electricity
NuclearEnergy
Energy Prices
RenewableEnergy
Environment (basically about CO2 emissions)
Here are some highlights, based on Carbon Credit Markets own analysis of tables and figures from MER:
2023 was the first year in U.S. story that more energy was generated from renewables than from coal. See Figure and Table 1.3 Primary Energy Consumption. And 2024 is following the same trend. Renewables defined as conventional hydroelectric power, wood, waste, geothermal, solar, and wind.
Coal peaked in 2005. Renewables surpassed also nuclear in the energy generation. See Figure 7.2.
CO2 emissions related to energy generation in U.S. last year were 4,793 million metric tons, 20% less than the main peak ever in 2007 (6,007 million metric tons). In other words, 2023 level was equivalent to going back 40 years. See Table 1.7.
Overall U.S., heating degree days have been steadily reducing over the years, being 2023 about 30% less than in 1950. Heating degree day is a measurement designed to quantify the demand for energy needed to heat a building, i.e. relative to the outside temperature. See Table 1.11.
In terms of capacity factor, an indicator of reliability of supply, it is hard to beat nuclear, usually above 90%. Wind and hydroelectric are around 30% while solar 20%. Specifically, capacity factor is a ratio of actual electrical energy output over a given period of time to the theoretical maximum. See table 7.8.
MER also has a few interesting Annexes, such as Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure, indicating numbers and trends of several types of charging stations: 148k (2021), 168k (2022), 185k (2023) and 192k (May 2024)
Here the June 2024 MER for download.
EIA also publishes the Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO).
The May 2024 edition indicated “In 2025, we expect generation from solar to exceed the contribution from hydroelectricity for the first year in history”.
And the July 2024 edition with even more insights:
“Solar power is the fastest growing source of electricity in the U.S. We expect 36 billion kilowatthour (BkWh) more electricity to be generated in the U.S. from solar in 2H24 than in 2H23, an increase of 42%.”
“Although natural gas continues to be the largest source of U.S. electricity generation, we expect 21 BkWh, or 2% less natural gas generation in 2H24 than in 2H23. This forecast decline is due to more generation from renewable sources …”
Click at the image below for the May press release and below to download the July edition of the STEO.
