Everything that needs electricity is made from processed crude oil
Ronald Stein, P.E., is an engineer, columnist on energy literacy at America Out Loud NEWS, and advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.” He is also the recipient of an unsolicited Tribute to Ronald Stein from Stephen Hines.
Olivia Vaughan is a business strategist. She has a Bachelor of Commerce Cum Laude and an MBA and operates across key sectors in the circular economy, sustainable systems and the built environment. She is co-founder of a Nuclear innovation company in South Africa, Next Gen Nuclear.
Steve Curtis has a Master’s degree in Health Physics from UNLV. He has spent decades studying spent fuel issues in Nevada and worked as a technical field team leader for nuclear search and characterization missions for the Department of Energy. He is currently engaged in education, speaking, and writing in favor of nuclear power returning to the United States, especially from recycling spent nuclear fuel in fast reactors.
Co-authored by Ronald Stein and Steve Curtis from the USA, andOlivia Vaughan from South Africa
Published May 18, 2026, in America Out Loud NEWS
Electricity is the cornerstone for our quality of life. It is not just a luxury anymore. If we do not have electricity for even a short time, our quality of life suffers a great deal. In fact, people can die if electricity is lost in places like hospitals and emergency management facilities.
The Difference Between Energy and Electricity: Some of us confuse the discussion of “energy” to mean “electricity”. Energy is well over a trillion-dollar annual market in the US, but less than half of it is electricity. This is important because the markets for the various transportation fuels made from crude oil, and all the products made from the oil derivatives from refined crude oil are more than “just” electricity.
- Oil produces gasoline, diesel, aviation, and bunker fuel, but it also produces raw materials for almost everything else we use. It is converted into plastics, packing material, and other source terms that produce more than 6,000 other products we use every day. In fact, oil was a staple of the US economy long before automobiles became popular.
- In fact, gasoline was a waste product of oil refining in the 1800s and sometimes set rivers aflame as it was discharged. So, if you think getting rid of oil is only about getting rid of gasoline, you are sorely mistaken. Gasoline, diesel, aviation, and bunker transportation fuels are strange commodities as well.
- Crude Oil processed through multi-billion-dollar refineries are the major source of “non-electricity” transportation fuels for planes, ships, trucks, cars, and space programs, and the oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 “products” in our society that did not exist 200 years ago.
In general, if prices go up, usually demand goes down. However, this is not so for these fuels. People continue to buy them at almost as much volume no matter what their price is. So, rising prices in these fuels take a large chunk of daily budgets. This is why artificial price hikes for gas and diesel are compared to “extra taxes”. It is interesting to note that the prices went up lately even though supply was plentiful (in the United States). So, prices are hiked on emotion and rumors, not necessarily on supply and demand. You can interpret your own meaning out of this, but that is the case. The thing to remember is that, despite the complaints about “high prices”, you would all charge as much as you could if you produced the gasoline, and you continue to buy it no matter how high it gets (there is some limit, but it is pretty high). But this article is about electricity.
How is Electricity Actually Delivered: We get electricity in the United States (and most of the world) from a tangle of wires called a grid. The one we have in the US today is old, vulnerable to terrorism, cyber disruption, and transformer failures. In a perfect free enterprise system, such things would be fixed by the “owners” because without a grid, they could not sell their product. For some reason, however, the producers of electricity do not seem to care about keeping the grid viable. You can imagine your own reasons for this, but the responsibility for regulating the grid has been usurped by the US Government and managed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). Like many responsibilities assumed by the government, private enterprise has backed off from their involvement and left it up to “the Feds”. Again, the result is less than sterling. This is the delivery part of the electricity market.
The production side of electricity is equally, if not more, volatile than the delivery system. Although operated by private firms known as “utilities”, the marketing is far from competitive. So, we are challenged by dealing with a private monopoly for your supply of electricity and a federal monopoly of the same for your delivery. We are seeing the results as prices for electricity constantly rise as subsidies for the commodities wane. You should expect this, but most “ratepayers” (note, we are no longer customers) seem surprised when it happens. The point of this article is to suggest some reasons why “ratepayers” should pay attention to this market.
Who Pays for the Additional Costs of Delivery: Electricity is the most important commodity you buy. You can go a relatively long time without food, medical care, and transportation without major effect, but you cannot go even a minute without electricity messing up your day. To date, outages have been few and related mostly to natural or manmade disasters. There are emergency contingencies in place to deal with these events, but everyone knows what is at stake here. Our lives, indeed, all lives, are severely degraded without electricity.
On the supply side of electricity, however, we are saddled with monopolies to provide our electricity production. If the government dictates that we use more wind and solar power, we are going to do that, no matter what the cost. If we are told to “get rid of oil”, we just do it. Basically, the customer (I am sorry “ratepayer”) has no say. You have only one source of electricity supply, so you just pay. Indeed, you are also paying for the subsidies that make your bill look to be lower, even though you do not see that directly. You should know that for every $1 trillion subsidy, EACH PERSON in the US pays $3,000. Somebody pays that cost since it is spent in real time. I will leave it to you to perceive who pays it, but it is mostly paid by the same “ratepayers” who use electricity. In fact, you can never know the true cost of your electricity since the market does not really care. We are told what price to pay and we pay it. There is no other option. Again, you tolerate it.
The Cost of Central Control: We often tout nuclear power in these articles simply because, if there were no government bias or monopolistic power, it would be far and away the cheapest power. But if highly influential entities want to sell wind and solar power, they just create the illusion that it is “cheaper” and “cleaner”. They tell you that CO2, although it is the most necessary molecule for life, is a danger. The government can even entice “agencies” to declare it toxic. So, you dutifully pay whatever cost it takes to produce electricity from wind turbines and solar panels. You never bother to even find out what that cost is. Indeed, regulatory agencies and monopolistic companies have a vested interest in hiding the real cost from you. But, make no mistake, you will pay for it.
In South Africa, the country has experienced severe planned outages, while the price of electricity has risen over 900% since 2007, leaving a trail of deindustrialization in its wake. Mines, smelters, factories and small businesses have closed due to untenable electricity prices. This while having installed over a dozen Gigawatts of wind and solar and being the largest wind market in Africa.
Our research has led to the conclusion that nuclear power is the cheapest, cleanest, safest, compact and most readily available fuel for producing electricity. We have presented these results in numerous articles over the years. Basically, nuclear power is producing all the time. Wind and solar, maybe average about 25-30% of the time. Nuclear power plants operate for up to 80 years (and more) while wind and solar have, at most, a 25-year life (wind turbines, 10 years or less).
Natural gas and coal generated electricity costs are 80% attributable to the cost of fuel while nuclear power is, at most, 10% attributable to the cost of fuel. Best of all, its “nuclear waste” is recyclable to produce 30 times the original electricity while wind and solar materials are, essentially, non-recyclable.
Energy Reality: The ignorance of the “energy ILLITERATE” leaders is shocking, as they NEVER explain how the “energy” from wind turbines and solar panels can provide TRANSPORTATION FUELS: jet fuel for military and commercial aircraft, diesel fuel for trucks and construction equipment, gasoline fuel for cars, bunker fuel for merchant and cruise ships, and the exotic fuels for the space programs !
Energy “REALITY” is that wind turbines and solar panels ONLY generate electricity but CANNOT make any products or transportation fuels for life as we know it. Planes, ships, trucks, and cars run on transportation fuels manufactured FROM crude oil by multi-billion-dollar refineries.
Reiterating the title of this article “Oil moves our machines, but electricity is the cornerstone of our quality of life”, but the world has become dependent on the products and transportation fuels MADE FROM oil, the same products and transportation fuels that unreliable green electricity from Wind and Solar CANNOT make!
Please share this information with teachers, students, and friends to encourage Energy Literacy conversations at the family dinner table.
Click this Link to Sign up for Energy Literacy from Ronald Stein
I personally have never seen a hospital that is without backup diesel generators.
Ditto for nursing homes–and I have unfortunately spent a lot of time in those.
Most hospitals are built at locations with 2 or 3 subgrid access points (for source redundancy) plus short-term battery invertors and long-term generators.
Hospitals know that even FF powered grids will and do occasionally go down though seldom from a loss of generation.
Back-up generation is usually a state requirement to get a license to open a hospital.
Next time you are in a hospital (just to visit someone!) look for outlets with a red faceplate.
Those are wired to the emergency circuit. The generators won’t cover everything, and only for 3-5 days unless restocked with diesel.
Key word: “diesel.”
For 2025: “The annual average of 11 hours of electricity interruptions was nearly double the annual average of the last ten years, with hurricanes a leading cause.”
(11 hours) / (365 days * 24 hours/day) = 0.1 percent.
Meaning, in a bad year the average American had electricity 99.9 percent of the time.
Crosscheck – diferent source:
“Nationwide, the average length of the longest power outage for U.S. utility customers was 12.8 hours. Approximately 45% of Americans experienced at least one power outage, with nearly half of these disruptions directly caused by extreme weather conditions and severe storms.”
11h vs 13h makes invisible difference.
The longest power outage I’ve experienced was about 12 hours. A tree trimming truck hooked the power line about two houses down from our house. Before it came to a stop it had pulled down 5 power poles with a combined total of 3 transformers, all of which had to be replaced.
When the pole in front of our house fell, it ripped the power box with the electric meter completely off the wall of our house.
On a bright note, when we bought the house, the power lines were attached to the house at the eaves. When they fixed it, they brought it up to current code which meant a 6 foot mast. All paid for by the owner of the tree truck.
For us it was about 3 days. On Whidbey Island, WA, we get periods of very high winds, which causes trees to play with the power lines. Fortunately we have an 18kw generator.
There was a disastrous blackout in NYC (1977) due primarily to an grid interconnect failure that lasted 26 hours. There was another in 2003 lasting 29 hours. Both were during summer months.
1965 was only 13 hours but also affected Canada and areas of other adjacent States.
In my neighborhood, we get blackouts every couple of weeks, usually due to lightning strikes and lasting seconds or minutes. Rebooting is annoying, but it is part of life. Longer have occurred but maybe once a decade, give or take.
Given the grid is interconnected as it is and if one section goes black it can affect others, perhaps the best calculation would be total blackouts per day by year.
Outstanding, this message needs to be repeated over and over and over again. It is short, clear and in language everybody can understand. Kudos to Ron, Olivia and Steve.
Trains?
And motorcycles, buses, heavy construction, mining equipment, tractors, combines, and harvesters, etc.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles…And Ships And Mining And Farming And Heavy Construction And Wind Turbine Transportation
Trains!
Where does the electricity provided by the overhead lines come from the power the train?
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/traction-current
So … on a calm day the trains don’t move?
Or do they depend on hydropower?
(Now reclassified as “renewable” … as long as building a new dam is not required).
Austria electricity comes mostly from HYDRO.
There is not one grid.
There is not one internet, but they are connected into a World Wide Web.
Grids are interconnected.
I guess our children simply won’t know what driving an Abrams Tank is like. One big benefit of FF is that you can store a whole bunch of energy in a really small and light weight area.
And fossil fuels don’t lose their energy capacity over time–they just sit there waiting to be used.
99.999% of people won’t know what that’s like, even me having been a 19D in the Army.
There are motorized plastic model kits, battery electric, that they can “drive.”
I have similar, a Leopard (German) tank. 😉
Two of the most important uses of electricity are refrigeration and air conditioning
Yes!
In the developing world electricity also needs to provide heating, cooking, fresh water, and adequate sewage management.
2-4 million people, mostly women & children, die every year from effects of indoor air pollution from burning wood, crop waste & dried cow dung to cook, heat the home, and have light at night.
The alarmist’s climate/energy polcies are immoral [they deserve nothing but ridicule].
Yes. The IEA note that
“730m people still live without access to electricity and nearly 2 billion rely on cooking methods that are detrimental to human health”
IEA ‘World Energy Outlook 2025’ (Nov. 2025)
Not arguing, but others might claim the most important use is charging cell phones and laptops.
That’s not true – the privatisation of the water network in Britain has shown that private companies underinvest in infrastructure to maximize profits.
Publicity owned electricity grids show slower rise in rates and greater grid stability in general.
As people here like to quote Adam Smith – that are exactly the things that he wanted to be public owned, not on the free market.
You take a side on the issue without discussing the trade space.
With you it is your way or the highway.
Bye!
Privately owned, but still government regulated.
You can’t make anything without hydrocarbons, including windmills and solar panels (and half the worlds food -via fertilizer)
“ The ignorance of the “energy ILLITERATE” leaders is shocking”
You fundamentally misunderstand what they’re trying to do.
Should be required reading in schools starting with 1st grade and every year with a senior paper written as a requirement for graduation.
Realism, not ideology, is what we really live within.
“energy” to mean “electricity”
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Electricity is a pipeline that transports energy. It is kinetic energy and cannot be stored. It must first be converted to potential energy. Gasoline on the other hand is potential energy. It is easily stored until needed.
Gasoline and electricity are not directly comparable because they are potential energy vs kinetic energy. This difference is routinely misunderstood by trying to compare energy sources (PE) with energy transport (KE).
Nits, but details matter.
You are partially correct. Electricity transports energy.
Electricity is not kinetic energy.
Electricity is not potential energy.
Electricity is the movement of charged particles (electrons) that are energy carriers, not energy itself. It is the electromagnetics of charge in motion that can be transformed into kinetic energy (including motors, light, and heat.).
Gasoline is a fuel, not potential energy.
Gasoline is stored chemical energy, not energy itself.
Thermal energy is released by chemical oxidation initiated by a (in the case of cars, an electric) spark.
It has been called potential energy, although there are disagreements on the use of that term can be expanded to include stored chemical energy.
Potential is generally applied to mechanics, such as raising a mass in a gravity field increases the potential energy of the mass.
Gasoline and electricity are definitely not directly comparable, but because one is a fuel and the other is a carrier.
The article under review identifies that electricity and energy are too often wrongly conflated.
In common/social language with context derived definitions they are wrongly used interchangeably.
Science always requires precise definitions that do not depend on context (aka frame of reference).