Flashes: October 23, 2013

• The City of Chicago celebrated this week that the city was on target to recycle 75,000 tons of material this year.  

          San Francisco is on pace to recycle 1.6 million tons.

• According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the nation has 9,370 MW of installed capacity, almost 5,000 MW of it installed since January 2012.  At this pace, solar electricity could  reach 40,000 MW installed capacity in five years.

          Petroleum currently sits as the fifth largest fuel source in generating capacity
          in the US (behind natural gas, coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric....we have
          almost 60,000 MW of installed capacity.

• From 1978 to 2010, per capita energy use in the United States dropped by almost 16%, with more than 2/3 of that net drop coming from 2007 to 2010.

          After the drop, we use 75% more per capita than France and Germany,
          84% more per capita than Japan, 118% more per capita than the UK,
          and 268% more per capita than China (and the world average).
          *Side note: Our energy use per capita is up about 2% since 2010.*

• Since 1993 the per capita cell phone ownership rate has gone from 6 phone owners per 100 people to 98 phone owners per 100 people, and spending on telephone (telecommunications) service overall has increased from an inflation adjusted $0.375 per capita (total of $93 billion) to $0.819 per capital (total of $255 billion).

Enjoy the journey!