Do The Math

Thanks to the EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration) for the data on this page. Data is for 2022. https://www.eia.gov/

How do we compare electrical energy with fossil fuel energy.

You can use energy, or heat content, to compare energy sources for fuels on an equal basis. Fuels can be converted from physical units of measure (such as weight or volume) to a common unit of measurement of the energy or heat content of each fuel. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) uses BTU as a unit of energy content.

Electricity	1 kilowatthour = 3,412 BTU
Natural Gas	1 cubic foot = 1,036 BTU
Gasoline	1 gallon = 120,240 BTU
Diesel	1 gallon = 137,381 BTU
Heating Oil	1 gallon = 138,500 BTU

Conversion Factor for common energy sources

U.S.A. Annual Energy Consumption

Energy Source	Quadrillion BTU	% of total
Petroleum	36.16	36
Natural Gas	33.13	33
Renewable (including wood and biofuels)	13.05	13
Coal	10.04	10
Nuclear electric Power	8.03	8
TOTAL	100.41	100

Total consumption in Btu is 100.41 quadrillion BTUs

Transportation Energy Consumption by Source

Source	% of source	Quadrillion BTU	% of Transportation
Petroleum	69	24.7	90
Natural Gas	4	1.3	5
Renewable (Renewable, not Green)	5	1.6	5
Coal & Nuclear (via electricity)	0		<1
Totals		27.6	100

27.6 quadrillion BTUs (27% of our energy consumption) by the transportation sector. That is 27,600,000,000,000,000 BTU.

If we will be Depending on Wind Turbines

Transportation sector annual energy requirement in quadrillion BTU	27.6
Transportation sector annual energy requirement in trillion kWh.	8.09
Adjust requirement to reflect EV’s being 3 times as efficient as gas vehicles in Trillion kWh.	2.70
Annual capacity for modern wind turbine in million kWh.	5.00
annual capacity after 25% loss due to storage and transmission in million kWh.	3.75
Wind turbine requirement to support transportation in thousands of turbines.	720

The total land area of the U.S.A. is just short of 3.8 million square miles so we will need close to 1 turbine for every 4 square miles. As transportation consumes about a quarter of the energy consumed, that translates to a turbine for every square mile in the country if we are looking at total energy requirements.

Storage techniques are not 100% efficient. Energy will be lost!

Currently the best storage technology is to pump water to a higher location and then generate later on demand. There aren’t many locations suitable for this approach.

Note that as of 2022, there are about 70,800 wind turbines operating commercially in the U.S.A. Not all of these are modern turbines capable of producing 5 million kWh. Turbines are also very noisy and they are also considered hazardous due to the occasional structural failure of the blades. Land with wind turbines is NOT also used for farming or ranching.

As a final thought, unless an incredible amount of storage is brought online, a backup technology will be required implying double investment. A change of direction to solar seems to have better numbers but the redundancy requirement remains the same.