In 1972, the U.S. Department of the Interior projected that Americans would use 116.6 quads (1015 BTUs) of energy in 1985 and 191.9 quads of energy in the year 2000.
In 1975, the USDI revised its estimates downward to 103.5 quads in 1985 and 163.4 quads in 2000.
The reality? Americans used 76.5 quads of energy in 1985 and 98.98 quads of energy in 2000. Almost no estimates from that time period predicted such low energy usage, even with the low energy prices of the 1990s.
The miss by Department of the Interior (and everybody else) is of gigantic proportions. Taking even the lower estimate of 163 quads, we find that the amount that the USDI overshot (about 65 quads) is more than the entire fossil fuel production of the United States. It’s nearly as much as total U.S. energy production of 74 quads.
[Source: Energy: The Next Twenty Years, a Ford Foundation report]
I’d guess that the underusage of energy is at least in part due to
1. the rapid development of transistorized electronics since 1972; vacuum tube electronics (TV, radio) produced more heat than signal.
2. The social impact of the environmental movement, which, among other things, encouraged *conservation* (many homes were insulated and/or re-glazed in and since that period; water heaters and refrigerators are much-better insulated) and *efficiency* (e.g. the appearance of fuel-economy standards.)
What’s even harder to explain is that our population has nearly doubled in that span of time.
I have been wondering about the undershot myself — it’s so dramatic and unremarked upon. How’d we get it so wrong? I’ll be posting some ideas soon.