The New Hampshire Energy Picture – Part 2: What Happens to the Energy that is Supplied to New Hampshire?

Following on from my last post where we looked at energy supply, I am going to take a look at how we use the energy that comes into New Hampshire. Let's start by taking a look at the New Hampshire Energy picture I presented last time. This is the complicated three column diagram with the cobweb of arrows veering off in all directions. This week we are just going to focus on the first two columns.

 

Our energy supply, generated in the State and imported, is directly used for transportation, for heating residential, commercial and industrial buildings and for producing electricity. Electricity is then used to power our homes, businesses and industry but that is an energy flow pattern that we will be looking at in the next blog post. So let's take a look at the energy flows from the first column to the second.

Even this simplified figure captures a boatload of information. It shows the energy supply, in trillions of BTUs, as well as the percent of each of the components of the total energy supply. In the second column we see how the energy is used for each of the main categories, again in trillions of BTUs, as well as the percentage of total direct use. Our direct energy use falls into four main categories. The bulk of it, 55%, is used to generate electricity which, of course, is then distributed to end users. Transportation sucks up 26% of the energy supply and the remainder goes into heating our buildings with residential and commercial buildings taking up 14% and industrial use absorbing the remaining 5%.

Let's turn our attention now to the arrows and their associated percentages. The arrows show the energy flows from each of the supply categories to each of the direct use categories. The percentage at the tail of the arrow shows the amount of a supply component used for that particular application. The percentage at the head of the arrow shows the amount of energy used in an application that comes from a specific source. By way of an example, the very top arrow shows that 66% of our oil based energy supply is used for transportation. Following the arrow to the Transportation slice shows that 95% of energy used in this sector comes from oil based fuels. So if we follow the energy flows radiating out from the oil based supply slice, we learn the following: 

 
• Oil based fuels totaled 153 trillion BTU or 38% of our total energy supply.
• 66% of oil based fuels are used in transportation.
• Oil makes up 95% of energy use for transportation applications.
• 25% of the oil supply to the state is used to heat our homes and businesses.
• 66% of energy usage for heating our homes and businesses comes from oil.
• 8% of oil consumption is used in industrial operations - most of it for heating purposes.
• 60% of industrial building heating is done using oil based fuels.
• A very small amount of oil, 0.5% of the crude oil supply, is used to generate electricity.

 

Let's move onto natural gas and examine how we use this energy resource. When reviewing how natural gas supply to the State is utilized, we learn the following from the natural gas split figure below.

 

 

 

• Approximately 25% of natural gas is used in residential and commercial establishments - most likely for cooking and heating applications.
• Natural gas represents 27% of the direct energy consumption of residential and commercial buildings. 
• One tenth of the natural gas supply is used by industrial operations where it represents 31% of their direct energy usage.
• The bulk of the natural gas supply, 65%, is used to generate electricity.
• Natural gas represents 18% of the primary energy supply used to generate electricity.
• A small amount of natural gas, ~0.5%,  is used in Transportation, probably as compressed natural gas.

 

 

Moving on to renewable energy supply, let's take a look at the next figure which shows the renewable split. In the process we learn the following:

 

• Transportation absorbs 12% of renewables in the form of corn based ethanol that is now part of our gasoline make up.
• This ethanol makes up 5% of the total energy used for transportation.
• Relatively small amounts of energy from renewable sources are used directly in building applications. These renewable sources are most likely wood and wood pellets used in heating applications.
• The bulk of the renewable energy supply, 75%, is used to directly generate electricity. This includes electricity generated by waste incineration and hydroelectric operations.
• Renewable energy constitutes 15% of the total energy supply used to generate electricity. 

If you have been following along so far, you might have noted that there are two very important energy flows missing. Those are the coal to electricity and the nuclear to electricity arrows. All of the coal and nuclear energy supply is directed towards electricity production. Nuclear makes up 51% of the energy supply used to generate electricity and coal supplies 15% . These arrows are included (and highlighted in red) in the combined two-column diagram shown below.

       

 

Hopefully this step by step untangling of some of the sources and uses of energy has been helpful in improving your understanding of the energy flows in New Hampshire. In my next post I will be looking at what happens to all the energy that goes into electricity generation and how that is distributed through to the different applications. In other words, we will be following the arrows from the middle column of Figure 1 to the rightmost column. With a bit of luck, this should lead to an understanding of how all the energy in the State is utilized.

I realize this has been a long post and some of the details might already be fuzzy but if you are to take anything away from this post, I  consider these to be the three most important points: 

1. Two thirds of the oil based energy supply for NH ends up in transportation applications and the rest is used to heat residential, commercial and industrial buildings.
2. Approximately 90% of heating for our buildings is done by a combination of oil and natural gas with oil outweighing gas, on a percentage basis, by a 3:1 margin.
3. Nuclear energy makes up 51% of the total energy supply used to generate electricity.

I would be interested to hear what you think are the most important energy supply/usage issues.

Until next time, thanks for reading the blog and remember to turn off the lights when you leave the room.

 

 

Mike Mooiman

Franklin Pierce University

mooimanm@franklinpierce.edu

12/30/12

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