From Guest Blogger Izzie: Electricity Usage by Country

Energy consumption is a worldwide concern. We as a species are showing no signs of curbing our reckless energy usage, even though we are becoming increasingly aware of how are usage of  water  fossil fuels, and other natural resources impact the planet. We are now seeking out, developing and implementing more sustainable sources of power, electricity produced by the burning of fossil fuels is still the dominant energy of the planet.

Therefore, we thought it might be interesting to try and get a sense of the scale of our worldwide electricity usage. The following are some stats we’ve managed to unearth.

Top 10 countries per electricity used

Bottom 10 countries per electricity used

Let’s illustrate the difference between the largest electricity consumers, China, and the smallest, the tiny New Zealand territory of Niue. It would take the residents of Niue 1,958,351 years to match China’s yearly consumption! Inversely, it would take China a little over 16 seconds to consume all the electricity Niue uses in one year.     

Now we have the broad strokes, let’s narrow things down. Here are the biggest and smallest countries on each continent, when measured by average electricity consumption per person every year.

Europe

North America

South America

Africa

Asia

Let’s wrap this up by looking at the full picture.

That’s a pretty hard figure to wrap your head around. Breaking it down into anything truly comprehensible is almost impossible, but here are two facts for you:

1. You could run 254,215,271 42” HD TV’s simultaneously for a year on this amount of power.
2. One single eco fridge could run for an uninterrupted 65,271,488.