Washington State Energy Use Profile, 1960--1990

This report is divided into three sections, each with data on energy consumption, prices, and expenditures. The first section presents an overview of statewide energy use trends. The second section presents energy use trends in four basic consuming sectors: residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation. The third section presents energy use trends in specific resource markets: natural gas, petroleum, electricity, coal, and wood. The appendixes contain information about data, sources, and a glossary. Data about Washington's energy resources are reported in two forms: in measures common to the fuel (kWh, barrels, etc.) and in the generic measure British thermal units (Btu). The common measures allow the reader to quickly grasp information in a familiar form. The generic measure allows the reader to compare energy resources. Conversion to Btu occasionally produces counter-intuitive results. For example, in different years, petroleum products have different average energy values, resulting in different conversion factors from barrels to Btu. A large amount of data contained in the Profile has been categorized and presented in a variety of ways. Understanding the meaning of categories is critical to understanding differences between the tables, especially those tables that present similar data. For example, petroleum trends are not the same as transportation trends, though they are similar because transportation is almost entirely dependent on petroleum. In another example, total end-use fuel energy consumption is not the same as total primary energy consumption. End-use fuel consumption does not include energy used for the generation of electricity. Counting both fuel used for electricity generation and electricity itself could result in double counting. Primary fuel consumption, on the other hand, does include energy used for the generation of electricity and is greater than total end-use consumption