The 1998 edition of the Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Review (AER) documents a full half-century of energy use in the United States. This long-term view reveals clear trends. Although the industrial sector demonstrated the greatest volatility, it led in total end-use consumption of energy throughout the period from 1949 through 1998. Among fuels, coal once dominated both the residential and commercial sector and the industrial sector, but direct consumption of coal all but disappeared from residential and commercial use and fell significantly in the industrial sector. Meanwhile, coal consumption to produce electricity grew steadily, and the use of electricity expanded strongly throughout the economy. Petroleum, overwhelmingly dominant in the transportation sector since 1949, remained so in 1998.
These and other central facts of U.S. energy production and consumption are detailed in scores of tables and figures in the AER. The introductory essay now includes estimates of U.S. energy use back to colonial times and forward to 2020, and an extensive glossary defines roughly 300 energy-related terms.
Annual Energy Review 1998, DOE/EIA-0384(98); 396 pages, 152 tables, 140 figures.
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File last modified: July 30, 1999