Details and Data for Energy Pareto Analysis

Energy Use Pareto

Sometimes I expect that longstanding discrepancies in per capita energy use are common knowledge. 

Here is a Pareto, or drill down, analysis of energy use. The idea is to choose the largest contributing factor at each stage. If the exact numbers are difficult to read, that is not important. Just choose the largest contributor, or in this case consumer.

This chart shows per capita energy use by global region (source http://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/03/12/world-energy-consumption-since-1820-in-charts/):

Conclusion: An average person in the USA uses twice as much energy as an average person in any other region of the world. 

How is that energy used?

This chart shows how energy is used in the USA. Don't worry about the units. We are only looking for the largest use sector. We will choose the biggest one. (This diagram is worth a double click for more detail.) 

Transportation is the leading energy use sector in the USA today. 

How is that energy used?

Most is by light vehicles. That means cars and trucks. 

Let see what people do with cars and trucks.  How are they used? Most of the miles are for people going to and from work. 

We need to confirm a bit, as the title on the previous chart does not say cars. It says household travel. Here is some confirming data that says we are improving in the right place:

The traction point for improving energy use in the US, without altering home lifestyle by moving families into apartments, is: make the green carpool part of this graph larger. The graph is from the same data source, http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb31/Edition31_Full_Doc.pdf , but presented by the the CSS at the University of Michigan.

Here from the source document: