How will COVID-19 affect energy use? | Guest Opinion

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global economic recession. Every recession lowers energy use, and this one may be a whopper. The 2008 financial crisis, and the Great Recession that followed, had a pronounced negative impact on the oil and gas sector, sending the price of a barrel of crude oil from about $150 to $35 in only a few months.

Last year, the United States used about 142.23 billion gallons (3.39 billion barrels) of gasoline and about 35 billion gallons of diesel. Airlines consumed about 18 billion gallons of jet fuel.

The airline industry is devastated so we can assume most of that consumption will stop during this crisis. Assuming long-haulers won’t stop shipments too much because they are essential, diesel may not drop too much. But gasoline will drop dramatically as we all hunker down, work from home, stop recreational travel, and shutter all restaurants, bars and sporting events.

Just commuting to work costs the average worker about $2,600 a year, or $28 billion/month for the 128 million people who drive to work. If 80% of commutes stop for 3 months because of the pandemic, then we will lose about $67 billion in gasoline purchases.

The United States is a highly-industrialized country, consuming about 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy per year. According to the Energy Information Administration, our general energy breaks down as Industrial (32%), Transportation (29%), Commercial (18%) and Residential (20%).

Thus, if this isolation goes on for 3 months, it could cause significantly less energy use in the first three sectors, perhaps as much as half, which would lower energy use by about 15 quadrillion BTU, close to $400 billion worth.

On the other hand, sheltering in place for long periods, watching videos and streaming shows, as well as online schooling and conferencing, means more energy use for those activities. At first, one might not think that’s much, but a study by SaveOnEnergy shows the energy generated from 80 million views of the Netflix thriller Birdbox is the equivalent to driving 146 million miles. However, others say that it depends on where the streaming data is coming from.

Energy producers may also be affected. Coal is probably the worst. Large coal plants take over one hundred 100-ton coal cars per day and only about two months of fuel on hand.

Nuclear is the least affected, being the most security and disaster-minded industry there is. Nuclear workers, like those at our own Columbia Generating Station, are highly trained in protocols and procedures that are ideal for handling contamination of any type, including biologicals. And nuclear has years’ worth of fuel onsite since it uses so little fuel to produce so much energy.

Fortunately, disaster planning is an integral part of electric and gas utilities, which regularly deal with hurricanes, earthquakes, cyberattacks and other disruptions that threaten to disable critical infrastructure.

In fact, the utilities started developing detailed pandemic plans over a decade ago, in the wake of SARS. These plans involve stopping and putting off maintenance and routine activities until the pandemic dies down, restricting site access to essential personnel, seating control center staffers farther apart from each other and being prepared to scale down to a skeleton crew if enough people get sick.

Utilities are participating in twice-weekly phone conferences with federal officials at the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security.

There is another real fear for Americans on the edge financially because of not working, and that is the fear of having their utilities shut off for non-payment. Some Governors, like Washington State’s Jay Inslee and California’s Gavin Newsom, are addressing that by urging utilities not to disconnect for non-payment, to waive late fees, offer payment plans and expand bill assistance plans. And the utilities are listening and taking some or all of these steps, like Seattle’s Puget Sound Energy and Tacoma Public Utilities.

So this pandemic’s effects on energy use is going to be complicated. Like 9/11 and the 1918 Spanish Flu, this pandemic will change how we live and that will mean how we use energy.

This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 3:15 PM with the headline "How will COVID-19 affect energy use? | Guest Opinion."