Worldwide energy use: looking at how much energy we are using right now
Keep reading to see which countries have been using the most energy per capita in the world.
Every year, we use the equivalent of the energy produced by billions of tons of oil. In this article, I hope to inform you guys of a couple things:
- Why can energy overuse be detrimental to the environment?
- Where are we allocating our energy expenditures?
- Are we making any progress with decreasing our energy output?
I’ll be tackling the first two questions together. The third question will be the main focus of this article and will be the basis for today’s data analysis.
What’s so bad about energy use? Where’s it all going?
I mean, don’t we need to use energy to fuel our homes? Isn’t that where all of our power comes from? Well, yeah. It’s good for us in that it provides us with things that we have become accustomed to calling essential. However, overuse of energy can be bad, and it’s because more energy use directly means more fuel consumption. Here’s how the EPA put it:
Producing and using electricity more efficiently reduces both the amount of fuel needed to generate electricity and the amount of greenhouse gases and other air pollution emitted as a result.
As I said, we rely on energy use to live: it provides us the electricity that we use on a daily basis. But what’s important to note here is that inefficient methods of energy use can be detrimental to our environment due to these underlying fuel issues. However, the EPA also makes clear that there are possibilities for more efficient and eco-friendly solutions
Electricity from renewable resources such as solar, geothermal, and wind generally does not contribute to climate change or local air pollution since no fuels are combusted.
Okay, that’s cool and all, but what does that mean for us? Are we still going to keep spending billions of dollars annually to use non-clean energy? Why don’t we look back at the last to see if we’ve had any trend of doing so in the past.
How have we done so far?
Let’s quickly look at how some countries have handled this energy crisis that we are dealing with today. Just as a quick overview, I think it’s beneficial to note that not all countries have extremely high energy use per capita ratings.
As can be seen, some countries use a lot of energy per capita, while others have a pretty low value for this metric. Alright, I think that’s pretty expected. Let’s move forward.
Which country has the least energy use per capita?
Answer: South Sudan
Now, this answer can be a little misleading. South Sudan, being one of the newest countries in the world, having recently come out of a heated civil war, has the least energy use per capita. This value may be inaccurate because of the region’s current conflicts, not allowing accurate measurements to be taken. However, despite this, South Sudan still has the least energy use per capita.
As we can see though, this value is increasing slowly. On the other hand, there are countries whose values for this metric are increasing at much greater rates.
From 1971, Qatar’s energy use per capita has increased by a factor of over two.
Which countries are taking the initiative to reduce their energy usage?
Answer: A lot
There are countries whose energy usage per capita reading has decreased recently. Even countries with high values for this metric have shown signs of a steady decrease.
Kuwait, a staple example of this decline recently (as of 2014), shows this trend despite a visible trend of a drastic increase in energy use over the last four decades. But we must keep in mind that there are still countries who are having trouble keeping this metric at a minimum.
However, we must also notice that Bahrain has had a general trend since 2001 of a decline in this metric.
Conclusion
We are clearly heading in the wrong direction with energy conservation. However, we have leaders around the world taking the initiative to try solving this matter by switching to more eco-friendly energy systems (through the sun, the wind, and water). Although this may be true, the majority of the world still uses non-clean fuels to bring electricity to people’s homes.
Note: I don’t own the data used in this article. It can be found here.
