Energy consumption per capita. Country Ranking
From 2000 to 2013, global energy investments have increased by 100%. It’s not just about popularizing renewable energy since the lion’s share of electricity needed of the population is generated as earlier — from fossil energy sources. Besides the rapid growth of global energy consumption, mankind has to face the increase of harmful emissions and environmental worsening.
To visually show the responsibility’s share of each person and to note which countries should try to reduce electricity consumption or accelerate the green energy transition, let’s look at the World Bank’s report on the energy consumption per capita in different countries:
For the sake of clear result, consumption is calculated in fuel equivalent — the amount of oil needed to provide a certain level of energy.
Top 10 Leaders in Energy Consumption:
Necessary to know
To really understand how important it is to care for the environment, we want to show how “expensive” electricity is.
Take for example an ordinary home light bulb with a power of 100 watts. Let’s leave the lights on throug the whole year (sure, you will need to replace the bulb several times, you know :)).
Let’s make a simple calculation:
- 24 hours a day = 8760 hours per year.
- 0.1 kW multiply by 8760 = 876 kW/hour.
In order to ensure the operation of one bulb during the year, we need to:
- Burn 320 kg of coal (1 ton of coal approximately gives 2500 kW/hour)
- Spend 2 hours for a wind turbine with a capacity of 1.5 MW, 25% of efficiency.
- Take 35 minutes for a solar power plant with a capacity of 1.5 MW (an area of about 3 hectares, imagine!).
- Decay 16 grams of Uranium.
- Spend 2.5 hours of a hydro-electric turbine operation, with a capacity of 339 kW.
We wanted to show clearly that any extra consumption of electricity is detrimental to ourselves. Please, love renewable energy and save resources.
