[rgmerk]

I haven’t bothered to dig through the details of this report, but the total energy use in petroleum refining is about 4% of US total energy consumption.

https://www.osti.gov/biblio/7261027

Even making conservative assumptions about how much of that is electricity, net demand for electricity is going to go up.

This is also what the people who model this stuff for a living are predicting - somewhere around doubling to tripling of electricity demand by 2050 IIRC.

[mlyle]

Very little of the energy used in petroleum refining is electricity. About half of it comes from the refinery's own byproducts; and a big remainder is from natural gas or coal used to produce heat.

Indeed, I just peeked at your report and it says the same thing: "Nearly one-half the energy consumed by refineries is obtained from by-product refinery gas and coke, and about one-third is supplied by natural gas. "