Comparing State Consumption and CO2 Emissions in the Electric Power Sector
Final Project for Climate Change Analytics
by Aishwarya MohgaonkarEnergy consumption refers to energy used by industries (residential, commercial, industrial, transportation) for all purposes, and from all possible sources. The United States uses and produces many different types of energy, usually categorised into renewable and nonrenewable energy Electricity is a “secondary” energy source that can be considered a primary source, as well as an end use sector. It is considered an end-use sector when it uses energy produced by sources like petroleum, natural gas, coal, or any renewable energy source (solar, wind, hydro power etc.) for generating electricity; and a Source when electricity itself is used to produce energy (particularly, to run turbines for any of the four sectors – transportation, industry, commercial or residential.
The State Energy Data System (SEDS) database provided by the U.S Energy Information Administration (EIA) documents all types of Energy Consumption and Production by each American State, and was used as the primary data source for carrying out this analysis. The first part of this report compares Georgia’s electricity energy consumption with U S and 3 other chosen states, namely – Alabama, New York and California. All 3 of the states have different landscapes and climatic conditions, so it should be interesting to observe the differences of energy consumptions in them. The second part of the report discusses CO2 emissions by the electric power sector while using non-renewable sources, comparing Georgia with the U.S. and the above-mentioned states.
The following abbreviations are provided as MSN codes, indicating the type of energy source, sector, activity, and units. These make it easy to categorise specific areas to look at when coding on R. The MSNs are five-character codes, where the first and second characters describe energy source (for example, NG for natural gas, MG for motor gasoline), third and fourth characters describe energy sector or an energy activity (for example, RC for residential consumption, PR for production) and fifth character describes a unit of data (for example, P for data in physical unit, B for data in billion Btu)
MSN Code Energy Type
CLEIB Coal
GETCB Geothermal
HYEGB Hydropower
NGEIB Natural Gas
NUEGB Nuclear Energy
PAEIB Petroleum
PCEIB Petroleum Coke
SOEGB Solar
WYEGB Wind
The above codes were filtered out from the SEDS data to carry out the analysis and comparison study. Keeping the above abbreviations in mind, we will now look at consumption trends for each state, visualised in the form of a plot for better understanding and then compared in a tabular format
Energy Consumption
The following charts show total consumption by sector (the lines are msn codes) from the year 1960 to 2022. X axis represents total energy consumption in BTU and
1. United States
The following line graph illustrates the Energy Consumption Patterns in the Electric Power Generation Sector for overall U.S. during the period 1980 - 2020.
I presume that the drastic rise in coal surpassing every other energy source during the 1980s lasting up to the early 2000s can be explained by the emerging economy, growing population (more consumers), and hence a rise in industries that had coal as their primary source of energy and heat for production. It’s a widely known fact that coal had managed to find its way into almost every growing industry during the U.S.’s economic boom. In 2000, the U.S. coal industry experienced a second year of declining production due to a drop in coal stocks and constrained production capacity.1
Georgia sees a similar trend as the US, historically being more reliant on coal as an energy source. However, in the last decade Nuclear Energy and Natural Gas have overtaken Coal as the largest energy source Although Nuclear energy has its downfalls in terms of hazard and safety, it does not pollute the air and thus is a better alternative to coal. In other renewables, there seems to be a gradual pick-up of solar energy as well.
1 F. Freme, "U.S. Coal Supply and Demand: 2000 Review," Energy Information Administration.
2. Georgia
Similarly, Alabama too see a drastic decline in coal dependency and an increasing trend in Nuclear as well as Natural Gas. Alabama also sees to have a higher average population (TPOPP).
Compared to the southern states, California has a more eccentric and diverse trend and reliance of energy sources – especially renewable energy sources. Although natural gas dominates the rest of the sources, there is a rising trend in solar
3. Alabama
4. California
(something we don’t see in Georgia or Alabama despite having tremendous scope in terms of access to the resource), and a promising increase in the reliance on wind energy. This trend can be attributed to the different landscape and altitude that California benefits from, and probably the State’s political standing as well. There is an interesting trend to nuclear power – with a sudden drop post 2010. This can probably be explained by rising reactor decommissioning; and a significant decline in Petroleum despite its heavy dependency between 1970-1985 (economic boom/ industries?)
New York sees a prominent and regular decline in renewable and polluting sources (Coal and Petroleum), and a promising rise in non-polluting, renewable sources (Nuclear, Natural gas, Wind).
Following tables present the Energy Consumption Patterns in the Electric Power Generation Sector for the U.S. and for each State during the year 2020: Non-Renewables:
5. New York
Renewables:
Highest level of consumption in the electric power sector of the U.S. overall is by natural gas. This also corresponds to highest levels in most states in our analysis – Georgia, California and New York. The limitations of coal-fired power plants have caused a shift to natural gas in general, however, Georgia and Alabama still use a lot more coal than its northern and western counterparts A similar trend in nuclear energy in Alabama and Georgia can probably be explained by the fact that plants operating in both states are owned by one company called ‘Southern Nuclear’ – headquartered at Alabama – governing nuclear power plants in both states. It is interesting to note that the southern states do not invest in wind energy at all Differences in the dependency on solar energy can be attributed to geographical location – with the northern state of NY being less likely to have an abundance of sunlight throughout the year and thus having to invest in other sources However, Georgia has a significant advantage here and should leverage on it more. I wonder if the drastic difference in reliance on renewables between New York + California vs. Alabama + Georgia has anything to do with their political standing over the years.
CO2 Emissions
To calculate emissions, the CO2 coefficients for each energy source were joined (left_join) to the consumption table previously made, multiplied with and then summed to find a total value for CO2 emissions for the overall electric power industry (combining all sources) by year. Below are the coefficients of MSNs (used for the calculations) for each industry presented in a tabular format:
Energy source (by the electric power sector)
Obviously, there are no values to the renewable sources because they do not emit CO2. This by default cancels out consumption values corresponding to the renewable energy sources. Below is a table with consolidated values of overall CO2 emissions (sum of emissions by all industries) by each state and by the US overall.
Line graphs of CO2 emissions over the years:
As can be observed in the line graphs produced by in the R code (please see attached R markdown file for better detail) – there is a general declining trend in overall CO2 emissions in all states, however, the most significant decline can be observed in the state of New York.
Summary
In summary, we find that Alabama has the greatest CO2 emissions in the year of 2020 overall compared to the other states. This can probably be explained by the increased share of consumption of the coal industry in the state as highlighted below
Overall, the observed increasing shift to Natural Gas and Nuclear Energy from Coal is a good sign for a continued trend of reducing CO2 emissions in the US and all the states. A rising dependency on Nuclear Energy could be good in terms of reduced emissions but there will need to be more policies in place for protecting communities and future generations from risks of accidents and water pollution. It would be better to diversify dependency on renewables instead, especially for Georgia and Alabama Although most of the terrain of Georgia is not suitable for setting up wind turbines, there is definitely some scope for it in the Northern parts of the state. A continued increasing trend in solar energy could be a good sign for Georgia and less risky if it can reduce nuclear energy dependency.
