How We Use Energy
The United States is a highly developed and industrialized society. We use a lot of energy in our homes, in businesses, in industry, and for personal travel and transporting goods. There are four major sectors that consume energy at the point of end use.
- The industrial sector includes facilities and equipment used for manufacturing, agriculture, mining, and construction.
- The transportation sector comprises vehicles that transport people or goods, such as: cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, trains, subways, aircraft, boats, barges, and even hot air balloons.
- The residential sector consists of homes and apartments.
- The commercial sector includes buildings such as offices, malls, stores, schools, hospitals, hotels, warehouses, restaurants, places of worship, and more.
Each end-use sector consumes electricity produced by the electric power sector.
U.S. Total Energy Consumption by End-Use Sector, 1949-2011
From 1949 to 2011, primary energy consumption in the United States tripled. In all but 17 of those years, primary energy consumption increased over the previous year.
The year 2009 provided a sharp contrast to this historical trend, in part due to the economic recession. Real gross domestic product (GDP) fell 2% compared to 2008, and energy consumption declined by nearly 5%, the largest single-year decline since 1949. Decreases occurred in all four major end-use sectors: residential — 2%, commercial — 1%, industrial — 9%, and transportation — 4%. Economic growth and other factors like weather and the fuel prices impact consumption in each sector differently.