[jdblair]

If you're interested in learning more about the big picture connection between our human society and energy, I recommend "Energy and Civilization: A History," by Vaclav Smil.

My biggest takeaway from his book is that transitioning a society to affluence requires, at minimum, 22.6 megawatt hours of energy per capita per year. High energy societies like the United States use far more. To de-carbonize, we have to plan new energy sources that provide at least this much energy for every person on the planet. Otherwise, people will understandably turn to carbon-based energy sources to meet their energy needs.

Producing this much energy from renewables is possible, but it is hard! Fossil fuels provide an exceptionally compact (in terms of land area) and effective energy source.

[edited to correct typo in the energy figure, what I originally wrote as 2.6 mw/h is 22.6 mw/h]

[exporectomy]

That's surprisingly low. 2.6 megawatt hours per year is 300 watts per person which is almost the same order of magnitude of what the human body can produce.

[jdblair]

Arggh... I made a typo. It is 22.6 megawatt hours per capita per year, so an order of magnitude higher.

[XorNot]

~60 kwH per day...that's actually pretty much inline with a normal household (also about the average of what my rooftop solar achieves).

[jdblair]

But this number is per capita energy use across the whole society, including manufacturing and transportation. Not just household use. France only reached this level in the 1960s, Japan in the 1970s. China reached this level in 2012.

[adrianN]

I would really doubt power estimates with three significant digits when I could reduce my total power demand by at least 30% by switching to a heat pump for heating instead of burning oil without changing my quality of life in the slightest.