From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: Energy Conservation
Date: 27 Jul 92 06:54:26 GMT
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <24884@dog.ee.lbl.gov> b_nbca@icarus.lbl.gov (Bruce Nordman) writes:
>In article <1992Jul24.043949.5135@ke4zv.uucp>, gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
>writes:
>|> 
>|> Industrial energy demand makes up two thirds of total US energy consumption.
>|> Reducing that 75% with homeowner tricks is not likely to be very successful.
>|> 
>|> Gary
>
>According to the Department of Energy, in 1988 (the latest year I
>have immediately handy) industrial energy use was about 36% of
>the total.

Indeed, I apologize for the error. The division is roughly equal thirds
between residential/office, transport/distribution, and heavy industry.
I read residential off the graph and subtracted from 100 to get the
total *non-residential* usage. Above I called it industrial and that's
wrong.

>Luckily, we don't have to use homeowner tricks on industry -- we
>can use industry tricks and do quite well.

Well I addressed basic metals refining in another post. I'll address
general manufacturing and transport/distribution here.

Many manufacturing operations have already gone to high pressure sodium
lighting in their plants. Many have converted to solid state motor controls.
And most have installed power factor correction equipment. Modern assembly
line operations try to balance energy usage against labor requirements.
Labor is generally the largest fixed cost that a manufacturing operation
has. Often, a small amount of extra energy usage can replace a large 
amount of labor. Manufacturing engineers design production systems to
minimize costs. That shouldn't be surprising. A dollar per unit cost
savings translates into $5,000,000 extra profit over a 5,000,000 unit
production run. If decreased energy usage means higher labor costs,
and it often does, then they aren't going to decrease energy usage.

In the transport sector, personal transport energy usage has been
reduced by 50% on a per passenger mile basis since 1972. Additional 
reduction by another 50% is feasible with currently known technology. 
Beyond that, sociological factors come into play. (Shifting from personal 
transportation to mass transit for example. We all know there is debate
over whether that is desirable, or even energy conserving in some cases.)

Distribution systems haven't done so well. Most goods transport is
a mixture of piggyback rail and motor freight. Neither have seen much
energy efficiency improvement per ton mile in the last two decades.
Of course, rail is already pretty efficient. Just in time manufacturing
systems have increased the burden on the trucking industry for timely
delivery of smaller quanities of goods. That's been a tradeoff of the
economic efficiencies gained in manufacturing inventory control versus
the reduced efficiency of small load transport.

A final note. This thread started on the topic of reducing the need to
build new electrical generating plants by freeing up currently used 
electricity for other purposes. The transport sector currently uses
little central plant power and a shift to electrically powered vehicles
would necessitate large scale increases in base load capacity. The
manufacturing sector uses quite a bit of electricity, but they are
already building their systems for minimum production cost and won't
change unless energy costs rise dramatically. The basic refining 
industries either use other fuels, in the case of steel making, or
use electricity very carefully as in the case of aluminum refining.
Neither is likely to be able to make substantial improvements in
their electrical usage. A 75% reduction in electrical demand by
non-residential/office users looks unlikely unless they do it
by exporting the factories and jobs overseas. That reduces energy
demand in *this* country.

Gary