So your argument in support of the claim that the US isn't secure in its energy supplies is that we're using our energy more efficiently than we were before?

I can imagine how that could be a second order effect of energy insecurity, but there are other explanations that seem more likely, like:

* The move from incandescent to LED lighting

* Improved insulation and heating technology

* Energy efficient appliances

* Removal of inefficient vehicles in favor of more efficient vehicles

You're going to have to do better than "per capita energy use is dropping" to convince me there's a looming threat to US energy supplies.

The US political situation isn't remotely consistent with it being a country that has just freed up 20% of its energy for alternative uses. It is acting like a country that is being squeezed and has an increasingly desperate underclass that has gotten quite disgruntled.

20% is like having no energy on half of Saturday and all of Sunday. The improvements you listed are not comparable.

I would hope that our energy consumption per capita is lower than it was 20+ years ago, given how much of it is from burning fossil fuels that we've been struggling to reduce.

Energy security is not about how much energy we do spend, but rather about how much energy we could spend, if we wanted. On this count, OP is right and the situation is still better than it used to be.

> is not a country drowning in cheap energy

On average, we have cheap power [1]. If you're power hungry, we have some of the cheapest power on the planet [2].

The fact that coal-burning China pays more for power [3] than American industry should drive home our massive geostrategic advantage.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/end-use.php

[3] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/

You seem to be referencing electricity. That is missing the energy which comes from oil. The energy from oil is the important stuff here, because it is the one that links into the US dollar and its performance.

And the US having access cheap oil is a good argument for why there might be a sudden step change in their economy - there are a lot of people with a serious interest in breaking the US dollar oil trade. Now including Russia and possibly China if they can read the writing on the wall. The US can't fight them both at once so China is in a pretty good position to get away with stuff right now if their regime survives COVID.

You dont think the largest oil producer in the world has cheap oil? Even compared to a country which is completely dependent on oil imports from the middle east and Russia?

If they had cheap oil, we'd be seeing people using more energy, a stable and improving political climate and rapid improvements in the quality of life of individual people. Like we see in China (or the rest of Asia) as they gain more access to energy. None of those things are evident in the US - it is a country that is seeing reduced access to energy.

Cheap oil in the US has been extinct for more than a decade.

> they had cheap oil, we'd be seeing people using more energy

America produces more oil than ever [1]. (We also produce more energy than we consume [2].)

Your argument that waste equals production is flawed because energy doesn’t turn into production at a fixed rate [3].

> cheap oil in the US has been extinct for more than a decade

American crude is among the cheapest in the world [4]. (Bonus: look at Canadian and Mexican crude prices. Cheaper still.) Production costs aren’t Arab, but it’s way cheaper than what China pays, even before transport [5].

What makes this fantasy particularly stupid, beyond being trivially fact checkable, is that it highlights China’s strategic weakness. The same weakness that pushed Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor. The United States can strangle their economy from thousands of miles away by interfering with their shipments of seaborne crude. (Pipelines have a habit of experiencing technical difficulties in wartime.)

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/crude-oil-product...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity

[4] https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/

[5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/748207/breakeven-prices-...

Now join the dots together - the largest oil producer and one of the relative cheapest has run out of legitimately cheap oil. Domestic consumption of energy showing signs of serious energy stress. There isn't any external provider of cheap oil that they can import from - in fact, the global market is in such a state that the US is exporting!

It is hard to say exactly what that entails. Maybe the world gets lucky with a fission/fusion breakthrough of some sort - maybe even a political breakthrough to let us use proven-good nuclear tech. But in the interim it isn't easy to say that the US stock market will mirror its performance in an era where it had unchallenged dominance of a global network of easily available oil shipments. And it certainly isn't safe to say things will happen slowly. Things could start breaking and move quickly.

> the largest oil producer and one of the relative cheapest has run out of legitimately cheap oil

It hasn’t. It’s still cheap and near cheaper-still oil. Plentifully. All while its economy uses less oil, year after year, to produce one unit of production.

Is it going to get pricier? Sure. But it will get pricier for almost everyone else faster.

1. Seems like you're not going to contest the idea that we're running out of oil.

2. Just a few hours ago you referenced a link [0] showing that China has electricity prices sitting at half the US's. India too.

The US has lost access to a cheap form of energy and is likely going to be forced to rely on electricity going forward. I put it to you that it is by no means certain that the US market is going to be in a position where it can sustain even relative out-performance, let alone objectively good performance in line with historic figures. Depending on how optimistic we are about the communists continuing to adopt sane policies, it may even be unlikely based on the current trends.

Fortunately those trends will likely change as the squeeze the US is going through right now gets more pronounced. But the conditions we see now are simply not the conditions of the past 60 years, putting strategies based on the last ~150 years of data into a suspect light.

> America hasn’t run out of cheap oil ... all while the economy uses less oil, year after year

So cheap you can't afford to use it? I don't want to be exposed to your version of cheap.

[0] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/

> you're not going to contest the idea that we're running out of oil

Why would I? Everyone knows this. It’s just not a catastrophe for America.

> few hours ago you referenced a link [0] showing that China has electricity prices sitting at half the US's. India too

How did you misread “China pays more for power than American industry” as China pays less?! Look at the national price for business in China. Now look at our states’ industrial prices. Lots of variation, because e.g. New York has different policy preferences than Texas.

> US has lost access to a cheap form of energy and is likely going to be forced to rely on electricity going forward. I put it to you that it is by no means certain that the US market is going to be in a position where it can sustain even relative out-performance

This is a real argument. Thank you.

I agree it’s uncertain. The point, however, is that this won’t happen to America in a vacuum. And as it happens, it hurts others worse and first. I’d also challenge the assumption that we’re out of cheap energy [1], but that’s a separate discussion. My point is that in a world running out of oil, nobody is better positioned than America, with its domestic reserves, co-located industry and cheap electricity.

> cheap you can't afford to use it

You really can’t think of another reason we won’t use our fossil fuels?

Hint: it’s the same reason Chinese and Indian power prices are anomalously close to America’s.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc...

Are you sure you posted the right link? I didn't realise there was a toggle between household and business prices and the business gap isn't as large; but even then for me it says China 0.092 and US 0.136 of electricity, so power in the US is ~50% more expensive than them (and ~36% more expensive than India).

I don't see individual states.

> You really can’t think of another reason we won’t use our fossil fuels?

The price rockets upwards and people start using less of the stuff. There are a lot of possible explanations beyond that, but it is safe to assume the obvious one that is most likely.

I'm sure you already know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox but I'll link to it anyway.

The second link [1]. 8.61¢ per kWh, national average for industry. Lower in the energy states.

> price rockets upwards

Again, where is this happening? I’ve provided numerous data points refuting this faulty hypothesis, yet you keep circling back to it.

Across the West, fossil fuels are being shifted away from for environmental reasons. India and China burn coal. That’s why Indian and Chinese power prices are even in America’s ballpark. Surprisingly, we’re finding some of the new generation methods, e.g. wind but increasingly also solar, to be even cheaper than coal and oil.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/end-use.php

That isn't a fair comparison though; China will also have a big spread of prices between their provinces. And it would seem from the other link you posted that average Chinese business has much better access to electricity than the average US one. India too.

> isn't a fair comparison though; China will also have a big spread of prices between their provinces

Then use the national figures. (And China won’t. Oil is cheap in Texas because it’s pumped in Texas. China’s closest analogs are pipeline terminals and seaports. The former is like a single county’s oil production. The latter vulnerable.)

> seem from the other link you posted that average Chinese business has much better access to electricity than the average US one. India too.

America is ridiculously more electrified than either country, so “better access” is the wrong word. I think you mean cheaper?

Short answer, no. New York City adds power tariffs because they don’t want you doing power-intensive crap in the city. If you’re doing energy-intensive work, you go upstate, wheee the tariffs are intentionally cheaper. Will a shop in San Francisco pay more for power than one in Delhi? Sure. But now the energy intensity comes back to bite, because that shop in San Francisco is doing a better job turning that energy into production than the one in Delhi.

You've given me two links [0] that show on average the US has notably more expensive electricity than China, and one link [1] that shows there is a lot of intra-country variance in the US which isn't really evidence because there will also be large intra-country variance in China.

How are you getting from that to "China pays more for power than American industry"? Could you do a summary in one place? Your links seems to support the opposite conclusion but maybe you've got something going on across a few comments that I've missed.

I also went to look at the absolute numbers out of interest and China produces 8 PWh total and the US 4 PWh total according to [2] and playing around with the "Electricity production by source" graph. Although obviously that means per-capita the US is still a way ahead.

[0] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/ & https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...

[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/end-use.php

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/energy#country-profiles

> two links [0] that show on average the US has notably more expensive electricity than China

The median American pays more for everything than the median Chinese. Including power. For electricity, particularly for households, the difference is largely taxes.

The median kWh purchased in America, however, is bought for less than it is in China because power-hungry industry happens where it is cheap. This cost difference is partly because China underproduces energy by a third [1]. It’s partly because we make power more cheaply [2]. The first gives us security. The second economic advantage. (It’s also why ditching coal and oil is easier for America than it currently is for China.)

Also, fun fact: electricity is getting cheaper in America, and has been for at least forty years [3]. (Those are household figures. No ready source for industry, but same tale, you can deflate historic prices using the PPI.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_p...

[2] https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...

[3] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/electricity-...

Well, I appreciate your dedication to responding after I kicked off this thread. Given the first response I didn’t feel it was worth the time to continue engaging, but you hit pretty much every point I would have.

The energy intensity of the USA (Kcal/$GDP) has been falling for decades. You don't understand the figure you are quoting.