Year to date electrical energy statistics, 2006 and 2005 compared.

[NNadir]

It is useful to see the year to year trends in electrical energy and, happily, these are now available on the EIA website on a monthly basis for 2005 and through April of 2006.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html

Comparing the January to April figures for both years, we some faint good news: Overall the use of fossil fuels for the generation of electricity is down slightly in the United States.

In percentage terms of overall use, the use of coal has fallen from 51.39% in 2005 to 50.63%, for petroleum from 2.22% to 1.02%, for natural gas from 16.08% to 15.83% of the electrical energy overall.

Thus fossil fuels accounted for 70.23% in the first 4 months of 2005 and 68.04% in the first four months of 2006.

The largest increase was in hydroelectric power which increased from 7.23% to 8.36% of the electrical output of the United States. According to text on the EIA site, one reason was increased river flows in the Pacific Northwest.

The next largest increase in percentage terms was in nuclear energy which increased its share from 19.82% to 20.61% of the total energy produced.

The next largest increase in percentage terms was in "other renewables" which in EIA speak means "Wood, black liquor, other wood waste, municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, tires, agriculture byproducts, other biomass, geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind." The share of these types of energy increased overall from 2.35% to 2.61%.

It is useful to examine the newly available breakdown of the overall "other renewable" capacity.

This data can be found here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1_a.html

As a share of the catch all renewable portion, i.e. as a percentage of a percentage, wood, waste, and geothermal declined, solar remained constant, while there was a large growth in wind power, which increased it's percentage of a percentage by 7%. As usual, the "other renewables" is dominated by wood and waste, but it is interesting to note that the third largest member of the "renewable" catch all basket is now wind, not geothermal.

In absolute terms, all forms of renewable energy increased except geothermal, which declined, and solar which remained constant. The constant figure for solar may reflect the fact that the figures are for what are basically winter and early spring months, Jan through April, and also that off-grid applications are not included. In any case the solar contribution remains trivial, still less one half of one percent of the entire renewable portion, which was, again, in the first 4 months, only 2.61% of the entire US electrical energy production. Put another way, solar electricity represented 0.009% of the power produced in the United States in the first four months of 2006.