Total final consumption

Revision as of 04:31, 18 February 2016 by Jmdonev (talk | contribs) (1 revision imported)

Total final consumption of energy for a country is the aggregate of all of the energy that is used for providing various energy services. Usually, total final consumption is an aggregate of end use energy. This means that it focuses on energy currencies like electricity and secondary fuels like gasoline. Electricity must be made by power plants, and most of these power plants are heat engines and have a fair amount of waste heat. This means that a systems approach to energy acknowledges that energy is different at different stages of the energy supply chain. There is a great deal of subtlety in acknowledging that consumers don't use coal, they use electricity which requires an infrastructure that often uses coal.

Figure 1. This diagram[1] shows how Total Primary Energy Supply becomes total final consumption. Various primary energy sources combine are changed with energy conversion technologies like power plants and refineries to energy currencies..

The focus of total final consumption is in contrast with the total primary energy supply (TPES) (see figure 1). Total final consumption is made of energy that can readily be used by consumers to serve their energy needs, while TPES is an aggregate of all of the energy going into the energy sector. For a detailed explanation of why this difference matters, please see primary vs end use accounting.

Total final consumption gives a sector by sector approach to looking at how energy is used. These sectors include:

To see how total final consumption changes with time please see the data visualization on end use energy. Explore the data in the simulation below to find out how the total final consumption of energy varies by country and by sectors within that country:

References

  1. Created internally by a member of the Energy Education team.