[Fot] Electric cars

[Randall]

---- Bill Babcock <ponobill at gmail.com> wrote: 
> Seven percent of the
> energy in the US is used to operate refineries. 

I think there is something wrong with that number.  Refineries are powered primarily by electricity, and they just don't use that much electricity.

For example, http://goo.gl/Ag0dy reports that the US petroleum industry used approx 48E12 wH in 2005.  But our national consumption for 2005 was around 3800E12.  So oil refineries (which produce much more than just gasoline & diesel) only used about 1% of the electricity.

And gasoline production (only) for 2005 was about 130E9 gallons
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=wgfrpus2&f=w
meaning it took less than 400 wH per gallon of gasoline.

The only way I think you could get close to 7% is by counting petroleum that they take in and don't turn into energy sources; like asphalt and plastics.

It's really hard to beat pumping energy out of the ground ... until there isn't any left to pump out.  None of the "alternative" sources make much sense until we finally do run out of fossil fuels.  Of course, that particular sky has been reported to be falling for several decades now, but it hasn't happened yet.

Randall