From Guest Blogger Jim Stack: Electricity Used to Make Gas
Did you know that is takes electricity and water to make oil into gasoline ? This is part of the refining process. The following facts are from a great article that Peder Norby did on oil refining. He walks the talk driving his MINI-E electric everyday and making the electric for it on his Solar system.
He shows how it takes more electricity to make a gallon of gas that you can drive in an EV!
Article by Peder Norby, below.
It takes a lot of “Energy” to make gas… Part Two.
I used coal in the title of the previous post as a cheeky reference to the favored argument by EV naysayers that electric cars replace a tailpipe with emissions from a coal powered electricity plant.
They still might want to look in the mirror 🙂
The previous blog post has been picked up by Autoblog Green and by the Washington Post and dozens of other sites. This has led to well over 100 comments from individuals debating the statistic and offering input as to how much electricity and how much energy is required to make a gallon of gas.
Some agree with my conclusions some don’t. Some say it’s higher some say its lower. All kinds of data is offered in the comments usually with several zero’s behind it, cherry picked data depending on the point of view of the author pro or con.
I wish there were an Energy information Agency FAQ that answered this simple question, How much energy is used to make a gallon of gasoline?
Unfortunately there is not a simple answer and it’s very complicated to find the information to make a compelling case either way. The various nature and different qualities of crude and the various efficiencies of refineries add to the complexity.
So let’s keep this simple shall we?
Step 1
Let’s begin with the price of a gallon of gas and the percentage of that that goes to refining. According to the Energy Information Agency on this page http://www.eia.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp
16% of the August 2011 gallon of gas cost of $3.64 goes to refining cost thus resulting in $0.58 a gallon in refining cost.
Step 2
According to the EPA and the Petroleum energy guide on this page
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/business/industry/ES_Petroleum_Energy_Guide.pdf.
(abstract page 3, first paragraph) Refineries spend typically 50% of cash operating costs (i.e.,, excluding capital costs and depreciation) on energy,
So we have 50% energy cost for a refinery, which would result in a cost of energy to make a gallon of gas of $0.29 per gallon.
From here we split off into energy types or feedstocks used to make gasoline.
Step 3
According to the Energy Information Agency, http://205.254.135.24/emeu/mecs/iab98/petroleum/expenditures.html
Just less than 50% of the energy cost come from Natural Gas and about 33% come from electricity, Also much energy is generated by co-generation, with an undisclosed amount of Natural Gas used to provide electricity for the refinery.
Using the energy cost to refine of $0.29 and dividing that by 33% gives you $0.10 of electricity cost per gallon of gas.
Step 4 What do refineries pay for electricity and energy? Good question. The most they would pay is the wholesale cost of electricity.
As an energy plant owner myself that has over generated for the year, SDG&E is paying me 3.7 cents per Kwh of generation . You can bet the power plants pay between two and three cents per KWH.
Congratulations, you were a net energy generator!
Account Number: 582687++++
You generated more electricity than you consumed when you trued-up earlier this year. As a result your Net Energy Metering (NEM) account will be credited for the excess generation.
Excess generation:
1607 kilowatt-hours (kwhrs)
Credit per kwhr:0.03692Amount Credited:$59.93
With a cost of $0.03 cents a kwh we can come to the conclusion that refineries use around 3 kwh of electricity per gallon of gasoline.
Furthermore, refineries have nearly 50% of their energy cost in Natural Gas, about $0.14 cents per gallon, If that Natural gas were used in a plant to make electricity, an additional 2kwh of electricity per gallon would result for a net total of 5 kwhs of electricity per gallon of gas.
Using these simple government non biased information websites of the US Energy Information Agency and the EPA, as well as my own payment from SDG&E, the information resulted in a 5kwh of electricity used to make a gallon of gas. Not to far off of my original estimate of 6kwh per gallon of gas. Throw in unknown energy cost to extract, pump, ship, store, truck and sell, I am confident an additional kwh or two would be added to that figure.
I stand by original conclusion that a gas car with an average fleet 22mpg will use more electricity (or if you prefer, electricity equivalent in energy) used just in the refinery process to drive 100 miles as compared to an electric car.
Cheers, Peder
Mini-E # 183, 34,000 sunshine powered miles.
America’s Irrational Petroleum Dependence By Doug Korthof
For the amount of electricity it takes to refine oil, we could leave the crude in the ground. Open Access Article Originally Published: June 19, 2009
It takes 8% to 12% of the energy in a barrel of oil to refine it into gasoline.
Oil extraction and refining is the largest industrial user of electric and natural gas in California (about 12% of the national market for cars, gas and the car culture, more than our share by population). There are other costs: for example, 20 gallons of federally-subsidized potable water, the amortized cost of exploration, transport, distribution, cleanup, etc. The electricity used to refine oil alone would power cars further than what’s in the rest of the barrel.
Now, a simple calculation shows that, of the approximately 1470 kWh of potential energy in a 42-gallon barrel of oil, it takes about 140 kWh of electric and natural gas to refine the oil into appx. 44 gallons of “refined products”–diesel, gasoline, heavy oil, etc.
With simple “ceteris parabus” (all things being equal) assumptions, the 140 kWh of energy used to refine that barrel would propel an average EV (or CNG car) at least 640 miles and as much as 840 miles, depending on the type of all-electric car. The EV1 would go 6 miles on one kWh; the RAV4-EV small SUV might go as little as 3 miles on one kWh, so the average would be somewhere in between.
So what does it all prove? The obvious fact is that, as a nation, we don’t use the most efficient means to run cars, we use the method that results in the most profit – and the most controlled profit stream — that benefits the Standard Oil Trust “Seven Sisters” oil companies and evidently bribed officials in Congress. And in the administration. Note that generation of electricity via natural gas now costs less then 4 cents per kWh, which is expended to produce much more profitable, but less efficient and more socially objectionable, fuel for IC cars.
This analysis, then, sort of pulls the mask off the claim that the oil market is a free market, or that our energy policy is rational.
An important point left out is that when electricity is used to drive cars there is no air pollution–a very substantial improvement over gas vehicles which might cause an additional cost to people in the form of lung diseases.