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by philipkglass
3344 days ago
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I'd love it if you could point me to a source quantifying how much electrical energy from the grid refineries use. Refineries expend a lot of energy turning crude into motor fuel but AFAICT most of that is made by consuming some of the input crude itself (for hydrogen and process heat). None of the citations I've found so far for high refinery energy use quantify the electrical demand they pull from the grid. So while I'm sure that reduced oil refinery use will lower primary energy use I'm not sure how much electrical demand it will free up. |
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https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_capfuel_dcu_nus_a.htm
and here:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_refp2_dc_nus_mbbl_a.htm
Which suggest 46,860 million kilowatt hours of grid electricity used.
577,245 thousand barrels of motor gasoline produced.
Which works out to 2kWh per gallon (but ignores the fact that lots of other non-gasoline products are produced as part of the same process).
I've seen estimates where if it was 4kW per gallon, then EVs are kind of breaking even and there would be no increase in electricity usage. I'd wildly estimate that maybe only .2 kWh would actually be saved since kerosene etc. would still need to be refined.
It's actually possible, that if a carbon tax was imposed, then refineries would use more grid electricity sourced from wind/solar/nuclear/hydro as a cost saving measure rather than burn fossil fuels.