This is the second in a series of reports resulting from a joint research project conducted by Resources for the Future, Inc. and Regional Plan Association, Inc, under a grant from The Ford Foundation. The purpose of the project was to evaluate energy consumption trends and energy conservation opportunities in the New York Region.
The first interim report, Patterns of Energy Consumption in the Greater New York City Area,published by Resources for the Future in July 1973, presented selected statistical data for an 8-county part of New York State. This report expands the coverage to all 31 counties of the tri-state New York - New Jersey - Connecticut Region, provides data on some fuels that were not covered earlier, and refines many of the statistics.
The report shows energy consumption for 1960 and 1970 (and, in many cases, for 1950 and additional years) broken down by energy form and by consuming sector: residential, commercial and public facilities, industrial and transportation. An effort was made to allocate energy use to these sectors as accurately as possible: conventional reporting categories often suffer from confusing definitions, such as when large-scale residential users are listed as “commercial,” or when public housing is listed under “public” rather than “residential.” The definition of industrial use in particular was changed to conform to the U.S. Census of Manufactures. A major virtue of the data is their comprehensive scope and integrated presentation: all energy forms are covered in their entirety, not merely gas and electric utility sales. Another advantage of the data is that they are allocated by counties - basic units for which demographic and economic information is available from the Census - and not by utility territories. The allocation was performed on the basis of unpublished statistics obtained from the utilities n the case of electricity and gas, and on the basis of a variety of auxiliary sources in the case of liquid and solid fuels. Maps of the utility service areas appear in the report.
The calculation of energy consumption on a small geographic area basis is a pioneering enterprise, and the figures shown vary somewhat in quality. While the data on gas and electricity are “hard,” those on the other fuels sometimes represent estimates with varying degrees of reliability. The methodology used in the construction of each of the tables is given in the notes. To aid analysis, selected demographic and economic measures of the 31 counties are given at the end of the report.
The report also contains projections of energy use in the Region to 1985. They assume a population growth from 19.8 million in 1970 to 22.5 million in 1985 (implying population stability by 2020), and a growth in labor productivity of 2.8 percent annually. This increase, though below the 1950-70 national rate of 3.0 percent, when coupled with a growing labor force participation rate, still causes large increases in per capita income, which in turn govern the energy use projections. A lower rate of growth in productivity would lower the energy projections. They should not be taken as predictions of the future, but as benchmarks against which different conservation strategies can be evaluated. They show what would happen in a largely unconstrained market, without supply bottlenecks, higher prices, rationing or other restrictions on use (the two major exceptions to this rule regarding natural gas and residential ele.ctricity are defined in the body of the text). The effect of conservation measures and other constraints on demand will be evaluated in the final report of the study, to be prepared by Resources for the Future, Inc.
By way of introducing the tabular material, this report provides a brief summary of key relationships that emerge from the study. Further analysis of the anatomy of energy use in the New York Region will be contained in the final report of this study, as well as in the reports of other studies to which information was supplied in the course of this work, notably those of New York University and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Generally, the purpose of this report is not to propose policies, but to provide quantitative data for analysis of energy issues by researchers and policymakers.
The report would not have been possible without the generous cooperation of some 65 utilities and private and public organizations, which are listed on the next page. Their help is gratefully acknowledged and they are, of course, in no way responsible for any faulty use of the data provided.
