[woeh]

> At its core, however, the math here is very simple. In the US, the average person uses 77,000 kWh per year. The average Finn uses only about 58,000 kWh. The Brits, good global citizens, use only about 30,000 kWh on average.

Does anyone understand how the article arrives at these figures? I might have missed something, but these numbers seem to me as a lot. According to my energy provider my 2 person household uses about 2100kWh annually. This is in my case without gas-powered heating, and external power use (such as personal transportation, or production of bought goods).

I can understand if these more indirect uses of energy are included in the average, however it would be helpful for the discussion if these numbers were explained. It might for instance help to explain how the West can slash it's energy use five fold, as the article suggests.

[SilverBirch]

I think that basically what it's doing is saying "Here's all the energy that Britain consumes, divided by their total population". So sure, your electricity might only be 2100kWh, but did the government resurface a road nearby? Did you think about the fuel burned to transport the food you bought in the supermarket etc.

[dredmorbius]

This.

Similar to measures of mean national income (GDP/population) or other such aggregate measures.

Note that direct consumption is often a small fraction of total consumption, and household measures of consumption of one form of energy (e.g., MWh of annual electrical use) neglect not only the shares of commercial, industrial, and governmental usage, but of other forms such as natural gas and vehicle fuel.

[woeh]

That makes sense. The definition might get a bit fuzzy when you have to account for the energy use of producing imported products, but I probably am getting a bit pedantic at this point. The overall point The article tries to make - poorer countries need more energy to get out of poverty - seems good.

[SilverBirch]

Yeah, I think the whole thing about being modelled on Britain is deeply flawed - be like Britain, have a relatively small population in a temperate climate with lots of coast line for off-shore wind and tidal energy, and off-shore all your heavy manufacturing processes.

Who is going to tell Floridians they need to be like Britain and turn off their AC?

[pbhjpbhj]

We've over populated the planet, surely, we would otherwise have the option to readily move to an area with more suitable climate and plenty of space for refugees.

[rr808]

The average US house is multiple times the area of UK house, so that makes a big difference. https://homescopes.com/average-home-size/ Add car sizes, public transport, less manufacturing.

Finland seems high in those numbers though, maybe because its all cold?

[megaman821]

It's hard to tell from the link, but this seems to be comparing the US' electricity consumption to the UK's electricity consumption. Most of the UK's energy use is from burning fuel for heat. Using energy and electricity as interchangeable is very confusing. That said, I would assume if you included all energy usage the US would still be a lot more because we drive so much more.

[leoedin]

It's looking at total energy consumption, not electricity consumption. The UK only generates about 4500 kWh per person each year - far off that 30,000 kWh number. In the UK (not sure about the US, but it's probably similar), about 25% of our energy consumption is space heating, 30% is road transport, 10% is air transport, 11% is domestic use and the remaining 24% or so is services and industrial. We don't really do AC here - I imagine that's a big chunk of use in southern US states.

The big thing that the article doesn't mention is that "developed" western countries outsource vast amounts of manufacturing energy usage to other countries. The UK is especially bad for this. We don't make most of our steel, aluminium, plastics or chemicals - so the many kWh required to make them isn't reported in our statistics. China does that for us.

[ZeroGravitas]

We have stats on that, from the same source as the article uses:

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling