Each American has the energy-equivalent of nearly 600 full-time “human energy servants”

This post was inspired by an analysis that Brian Wang featured last November at his Next Big Future blog that attempts to answer the question: Based on the amount of energy expended per average American for residential electricity, heating, cooking, and transportation, and for industry and commercial purposes, how many full-time “energy equivalent human servants/workers” would the average American’s energy use represent?(This post is an update using 2015 energy data, see previous CD post here using 2014 data.)

To answer that question requires a series of calculations and energy measurement conversions to end up with a constant energy unit of measurement in “watts of constant energy.” Here’s my new analysis below (following Brian Wang’s methodology, but providing more details and data sources), performed with some very capable research assistance from CD regular Thomas Sullivan:

1. In 2015, according to data from the EIA, Americans consumed slightly more than 97 quadrillion BTUs of total energy in the following proportions:

a) Residential: 20.87 quadrillion BTUs (21.4% of the total — roughly half of this is for electricity and the other half is for natural gas)

b) Commercial: 18.01 quadrillion BTUs (18.5% of the total)

c) Industrial: 31.07 quadrillion BTUs (31.9% of the total)

d) Transportation: 27.72 quadrillion BTUs (28.5% of the total)

2. In kilowatt-hours (kWh), the energy consumed in the US last year was 28.53 trillion kWh(conversion calculation from BTUs to kWh performed here).

3. The US population in 2015 was 321.4 million, and therefore the energy expended per American last year was 89,763 kWh (28.53 trillion kWh ÷ 321.4 million people). Measured in constant watts of energy, that amount of energy in kWh would be equivalent to 10,243 watts of constant energy(conversion calculation performed here) per American.

The next part of the analysis involves calculating human energy in horsepower units (hp) and then converting hp to watts, as follows:

4. A healthy human can sustain about 0.1 horsepower units of energy indefinitely, which is the energy equivalent to 74.6 watts of constant energy (conversion calculation performed here).

Now putting the two parts of the analysis together, we can calculate that a typical American has the energy equivalent of “137.3 human energy servants (or domestic energy workers)” laboring for them 24 hours every day, during each of the 365 days of the year (10,243 constant watts of annual energy per American / 74.6 watts of energy per human). Over a full year, that would be the equivalent of 1,202,748 hours of work (24 hours per day X 365 days X 137.3 workers), which if divided by the annual number of hours for a single full-time worker working 40 hours per week for 52 weeks per year (2,080), would be 578.2 individual full-time workers. In that case, each American today has the energy equivalent of nearly 600 “human energy servants” (see photo above) providing around-the-clock energy services that would include providing lights and electricity for our homes, heating our hot water, providing energy for our stoves and ovens, heating and cooling our homes, providing all of the energy for our transportation needs (traveling by car, truck, bus, train, airplane, subway), and fueling the entire US industrial and commercial sectors that provide our food, clothing, appliances, computers, electronic equipment, and automobiles, etc.

Here are the specific work assignments for the nearly 600 full-time “human energy servants/workers” in service to every American, based on the breakdown above of energy uses in part 1:

• 62 human energy servants working full-time to provide the energy required for our home electricity
• 62 human energy servants working full-time to provide the energy required to heat our homes, heat our water, and provide energy to cook our food.
• 165 human energy servants working full-time to provide the energy required for all of our individual transportation needs by car, bus, light rail, subway, train, and airplanes; and all of the energy required to transport goods like food, clothing, beverages, automobiles, and electronic goods to our local retail stores, and to our homes following online purchases.
• 107 human energy servants providing the energy equivalent per American for what is required to power the entire commercial sector of the US economy: all of the retail stores, warehouses, restaurants, office buildings, shopping centers, supermarkets, schools and universities, government buildings, etc.
• 184 human energy servants providing the energy equivalent of what is required per person to power the entire industrial sector of the US economy: all of the nation’s factories, utilities, mining operations, farms, processing plants, construction activities, chemical production, etc.

In total, Americans have the equivalent of more than 185 billion “human energy servants” (578.2 per person x 321.4 million Americans).

Bottom Line: It’s something of a miracle that the affordable energy enjoyed by even an average American today (consumer spending on energy is only about 3.8% of total consumer expenditures so far this year, see chart above) is the energy equivalent of having nearly 600 full-time “human energy servants” to make our lives more comfortable, convenient and enjoyable. In fact, almost all of the great achievements and technological advances that have flowed from the bounty of free market capitalism have bestowed a disproportionate share of the benefits generated on the average person, and not on the wealthy and powerful. That insight is an important economic lesson that I learned from Milton Friedman, in his classic book “Free to Choose,” quoted here from pages 148–149.

Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant relatively little to the wealthy. The rich in Ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing: running servants replaced running water. Television and radio — the patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading artists as domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets — all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of Western capitalism have redounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful.

So for the nearly 600 “human energy servants” that each of us has working on our behalf to improve our lives, we can thank the forces of free market capitalism that have consistently and dependably brought us cheap, affordable and abundant energy for the last century or more. And let’s give some special thanks to America’s great petropreneurs and the “Made in the USA” drilling and extraction technologies that they pioneered and perfected to access America’s oceans of abundant shale oil and gas that have made our “human energy servants” even more affordable in recent years.

First published at AEIdeas on September 28, 2016.