by donshan » Mon 24 Oct 2005, 12:20:47
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Longsword', 'B')est I could find:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0105.htmlGives energy expenditures and GDP per year.
Hope that helps.
Thanks very much. It does help. It appears that energy sector near 10% may be a better number, and as MrBill notes it is not clear if all the related parts are in the EIA numbers. For example, the contribution of running gas station businesses.
Like the quote I saw and posts added so far indicate, the US economy would grind to a halt without the energy sector. I have always tried to quantify issues.
For example, It is easy for some to to say that solar power alone could solve our energy needs until you do the math on how much it would take. I am still working on an estimate of how much solar power it would take, to produce the hydrogen it would take, to replace 8.8 million barrels of gasoline use a day using hydrogen fueled vehicles. The initial "ball park" is around 10,000 sq. miles of solar arrays, but I am still checking for errors and methods of the calculation. There was a paper in Nature, that also did this calculation and came up with 1000 nuclear plants needed to fuel the US transportation with hydrogen.
The related question then becomes," what fraction of US GDP would be needed to build and run a new renewable/nuclear energy infrastructure for a "hydrogen economy" on this scale, and how does that compare with doing it with fossil fuels as we do it today?"
Without electricity you can't buy a gallon of milk today, because the cash registers are down, or fill up you gas tank, or run the furnace in your home, and milk, gas, and heating fuel have their own energy inputs to get them produced and delivered to market.