1. The United States is the world’s largest producer of nuclear power, but it derives a smaller percentage of its electricity from nuclear technology than many other industrial countries.
2. America’s known coal reserves alone constitute 28 percent of the entire world’s coal supply. The United States has enough recoverable coal reserves to last at least 200 to 250 years, with reserves that are over 1 1/2 times greater than those of our nearest competitor, Russia, and over twice those of China.
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3. Depending on technology and economics, as much as 1 trillion barrels of oil equivalent could be recoverable from oil shale resources in the United States, with the recent additions of estimated resources by the U.S. Geological Survey. For reference, 1 trillion barrels is about the amount of oil used by the world over the last 150 years.
4. Alaska is estimated to hold more coal than the entire lower 48 states. (Though the Energy Information Administration’s estimate of recoverable coal reserves in Alaska is 2.8 billion short tons, geological estimates by the USGS put the in-place figure at more than 6 trillion short tons.)
5. Estimates of U.S. proven oil reserves are about 22 billion barrels, but proven reserves do not count areas where we have not looked, and do not include the roughly 97 percent of government lands that are not leased, the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve or oil shale. Nor do they include resources made available through new technologies, as in the case of areas of the U.S. long thought “tapped out” where huge new supplies of natural gas from shale formations have been discovered.
6. A small portion of ANWR that is made off-limits by the federal government is estimated to have 10.4 billion barrels of oil. Recently, the Obama administration awarded grants of $300 million to generate 38 million gallons of petroleum alternatives per year. ANWR would generate 42 million gallons per day, and generate revenue rather than costing money.
7. Coal produced 51.4 percent of all U.S. electricity in fiscal 2007. The EIA predicts that coal-fired generation will supply 54 percent of electricity in 2030. More than 90 percent of the coal consumed in the U.S. is used to generate electricity.
8. Even with millions in subsidies spent over the last two decades, solar electricity still accounts for only 0.02 percent of the electricity in the United States.
9. According to the General Accounting Office, in fiscal 2007, wind received 2.8 percent of all federal research subsidies to power generation but produced only 0.4 percent of U.S. electricity. Per kilowatt-hour, this was 14.7 times higher than the amount allocated to coal, most of which was spent to develop cleaner technologies.
10. China now produces more carbon dioxide than the U.S.
Compiled by the Institute for Energy Research.
