How much energy do we use?
by William Papolis, Wednesday Jan 31, 2007 6:45PM EST
Top 10 energy consumers per capita
Now let's consider the Top 10 regions listed by "Energy consumption per capita".
Source: International Energy Agency (Don't know where these Regions are? Use this: Google Earth)
Hmm... OK, Iceland is really far north, so we are not surprised they have high per capita energy consumption (perhaps for heating fuel?), but Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait, all using 10+ tonnes of oil (equivalent) per person per year? Very interesting! All these regions are oil producers and likely oil is cheaper than water there. (It's important to note that oil producing regions consume a great deal of energy in the production of oil and other petroleum products. That combined with low populations would likely be the main reason why per capita energy consumption among these regions is so high.)
Trinadad and Tobago? Luxemboug? I am not sure why they appear so high in this graph. If you live there, give us some feedback in our forums explaining the reason.
Also note that Canada and the US are on this list. Both of these countries are rich (high GDP), are geographically very large (energy required for transportation), and Canada, being a high latitude region (ie. cold winters), consumes a lot of energy for heating. Canada is also a big exporter of oil which contributes to it's high per capita energy consumption.
Putting these numbers into perspective, average Canadians consume 8.13 tonnes (or 17,924 lbs of oil equivalent).
Note: Bottom line, we don't consume that much oil. We all use many forms of energy: Coal (dirtier than oil), Natural Gas (cleaner than oil), and Nuclear (which does not release CO2 emissions), so the final numbers here are primarily used for comparison purposes.
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