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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Every year, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (part of the Department of Energy) releases an energy flow chart [llnl.gov] showing how much and what types of energy were consumed in the U.S. in the past year. In recent years there have mainly been small increases in energy use each year, but in 2015, that trend reversed and Americans actually used less energy than in the previous year [treehugger.com].

Compared to 2014, Americans used 0.8 quadrillion BTU (quads) less energy in 2015. A BTU or British Thermal Unit, is a unit of measurement for energy and 3,600 BTU is equivalent to about 1 kilowatt-hour. Natural gas use increased by 3 percent while coal use decreased by 12 percent and it's that shift that could have had the biggest impact on the numbers since natural gas power plants are far more efficient at producing electricity than coal-fired ones.

The better news is that renewable energy use has continued to grow with wind energy use up 5 percent, geothermal up 11 percent and residential solar up 11 percent. The biggest increase was in utility-scale solar use which rose 25 percent thanks to a few major projects finally starting to feed into the grid in 2015.

A mild winter helped, but there were also gains in efficiency and conservation that add up to demand destruction.

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