Talk:List of countries by energy consumption per capita

Units

Why are the data given in the obscure unit "kg of oil equivalent per year"? Wouldn't watts be much more useful?--87.162.51.206 (talk) 08:11, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Because that's the unit used by the source. Yes, watts would be useful. Please plunge forward and add another column. --Cambrasa confab 10:07, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The last column is wrong, energy consumption cannot be measured in Watts, it needs to be watts*time~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 01001 (talk • contribs) 04:12, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Let me emphasize the last comment. The last column is WRONG. Energy consumption cannot be measured in Watts. It needs to be Watts * time. --71.214.223.171 (talk) 15:44, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure, if you're measuring over someone's lifetime. If you're measuring energy consumption rate, the unit would be Watt * time / time = Watt. Owen× ☎ 16:32, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Replaced data with most recent (2010) data. Removed awkward units to a simple one of energy. Fixed values for fourth (kWh) column. --Evvp137 (talk) 02:54, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Numbers too small

I'm pretty sure these numbers are wrong. Converting them to normal units, for example in the case of the Netherlands, would give an energy consumption of 5012 kgoe = 5.012 toe = 210 GJ/person/year, or 210 GJ / (365*24*3600) = 6 kW per person. That's way to small for any developed country. Shouldn't the numbers be toe/person/year or something? baszoetekouw (talk) 14:27, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

What are you talking about? 6 kW per person is a lot! If you turn on all the lights in your home, and run the washing machine and dishwasher around the clock, you'd be using about 4 kW of electricity, and that's for an average family of 4. City driving uses about 10 kW, but few drive more than two hours a day, so that contributes maybe 0.3 kW per person. The rest comes from consuming goods which take a lot of energy to produce. Owen× ☎ 22:38, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

By the way, 6 kilowatts for a year is 2,190 kilowatt hours which is equivalent to about 60 gallons [U.S.] of automotive gasoline. I recall? the per capita gasoline equivalent energy consumption in the US is about 2,800 gallons so these numbers are too small.172.131.84.154 (talk) 16:51, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I think 6 kilowatts for a year is more like 52416 kwh. (6kw*364days*24hours=52416kwh). Using you gallon conversion, that'll give about 1500 gallons of gas. --Lightenoughtotravel (talk) 21:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

ie. US Energy Consuption etc.

All these numbers must be way off! According to the EIA the US energy consuption for 2005 was 100.691 quadrillion BTU. ( 100,691,000,000,000,000 Btu = 2,537,370,632.2 tonnes of oil equivalent = 106,234,633,630,000,000,000 joules ) That's about 8 tonnes of oil eq. per person or 350,000,000,000,000 joules as I figured it.

Using toe and not 7,794.8 kgoe as in the chart label, the energy converter I found also gave this result. 7,794.8 tonnes of oil equivalent = 326,352.6864 gigajoules = 90,653,524 kilowatthours. This chart needs to be looked at by someone familiar with basic science or physics. 172.131.84.154 (talk) 16:51, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

This is not a list of countries by energy consumption.

This is a list of countries by alphabetical order, with energy consumption data included with the list. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.255.97.207 (talk) 20:01, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

See the little butterfly icon in the header of each column? Click on it, and the table will be sorted by that column. Owen× ☎ 20:33, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Someone funny people changed the flag of Argentina by the flag of Jamaica... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.68.77.77 (talk) 19:53, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with html, can someone add number column 1 to however many countries are on this list down the left hand so when the countries are arranged we can see the ranking without having to count from the top. And perhaps make ranking by usage default? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marksiqi (talk • contribs) 04:46, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

New Discussion

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 11:24, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

This table is questionable

For instance: Albania, 673.5 tonne (kilogram) of oil equivalent = 7,832,805,000 watthours. That's like the energy consumed by a 1000 watt light bulb burning 7,832,805 hours.

The conversion of energy to watts is nonsensical unless some time is clearly specified. A watts is only a rate of energy consumption not how much energy was consumed. It would be like comparing the gallons of gas consumed per hour without specifing how many hours.

I think the point trying to be made is that, for instance, an Albanian is consuming 897.1 watts 24 hours a day 365 days a year. That would be around 7,800,000 watthours, which is only off by a factor of 1000. So perhaps the watts colume shoud be in kilowatt hours or noted better. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me should look into this. 172.129.118.43 (talk) 13:58, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

The number for Albania is 673.5 kilogram of oil equivalent, not 673.5 tonne, hence the factor of 1000 discrepancy you got. And there is no "nonsensical" unit conversion here. All units are of power, not energy. The first column is kilogram oil equivalent per year, the second is gigajoule per year, and the third is Watt--all power units. Please take a closer look and let me know if I misunderstood your question. Owen× ☎ 15:24, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for finding my 1000 factor mistake. Using the watt number given and using that amount of power constantly for a year and it come out about right. See watt, it says it's a rate. I find energy allways expresed as watt hours or kilowatt hours. I just have to think of the Watt colume as "watt year" for it to make sense to me. So then an Albanian uses only about the same energy as a hair dryer running constantly all year long. Thanks again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.165.136.6 (talk) 10:47, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Again and again. "Kiolgram of oil equivalent" and "Joules" mean an amount of energy. A watt is a rate of using energy. It is misleading to make such comparisons if not explained. 42 gigajoule = 11,666,666.667 watthours. Your reasoning and numbers are correct but the article is titled Energy consumption, not Power consumption or Rate of Energy consuption. Apparently this is "spliting hairs" to your way of thinking, so I give up. At least the "per year" was added in the introduction after the kgoe and GJ amounts of energy to imply a rate. Why don't you just try to explain better, as I had tried, instead of deleting my attempt. 172.130.37.218 (talk) 13:43, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

From the WRI source: "To facilitate comparisons among different sources of energy, the IEA measures the heat content of all energy commodities in tonnes (metric tons) of oil equivalent (toe). A tonne of oil equivalent measures the energy contained in a metric ton (1000 kg) of crude oil and is equal to 10 Exp. 7 kilocalories, 41.868 gigajoules, or 11,628 kilowatt-hours (kWh)." 172.130.37.218 (talk) 14:03, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Once again: "Kiolgram of oil equivalent per year" is a unit of power, not energy, as is joule per year. I agree that the title of the article is misleading; I'd be happy to rename it to "List of countries by power consumption per capita", but the common name in the literature is the incorrect one--energy, so we may be stuck with it. Regrettably, the authors of the WRI sources are economists, not engineers. Owen× ☎ 15:45, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

When people use energy the are charged for gallons of gas or kilowatt hours. The rate of consuption (watts) is meaningless unless people understand that it is for a defined period of time, which is in this case 24 hours a day 365 days a year. That's why the Department of Energy, the International Energy Agency and most other organization talk about energy consuption as a quantity like gallons of gas, tonnes of oil equailent, or gigawatt hours. I not going to continue to argue with you about trying to make the chart more comprehensible for everyone and you probably just don't want to change it to kilowatt hours. Your "Watt" data is actually in watt-years (8.76 kilowatt hours), which is a term seldom used. You made your point and one could say it is technically correct but it is still not the way energy is talked about in terms of consumption, not even by "engineers". Most every reference I find confirms my point. It just makes more common sense to say "the per capita consuption is X many kilowatt hours per year", it would be acurate, and it would be easier for a layman to understand. Wikipedia articles are NOT for engineers only. By the way, WRI was talking about a quantity used per year NOT the rate power is used and there is a difference that you keep changing to meet your miss-interpertation. 172.162.170.247 (talk) 02:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

A watt-year per year is a watt, and a watt-second per year is a joule per year. Think about it. If you're upset that we don't have anything between watt-second and watt-year, go ahead and add one more column with watt-hour-per-year. To me, the whole idea of having time units in both the numerator and the denominator seems silly. Owen× ☎ 14:32, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Information about energy consumption is almost alway given it terms of a "guantity" like calories, BTU, or kilowatt-hours. Yes, kgoe per year could be interputied as a rate of power consumption but that's not the information trying to be conveyed. An anology: Per captia water consumption might be given as a rate of drops per second but that is not as meaningful as liters consumed anually. By giving the rate, someone would then have to multiply how many seconds in a year times the rate to find the information they want. In another wikipedia article someone "also missing the point in my opinon" went to the trouble of converting EIA energy consuption tables from Quadrillion Btu per Year to Terawatts and then only posting only their Terawatts results. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#current_consumption) Again, I don't think it is a good practice to change from a BTU etc. amount to a Watt rate without an explaination given. ... I think we should just agree to disagree and drop this discussion. 172.130.152.214 (talk) 17:54, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the confusion is in how the table is labelled. Call it energy consumption '...per capita per year...', then strike the reference to annum from the top of each column. Reading the table already, one is already under the implication that the data is presented as a year rate, and then confusion sets in when people look at the title for each column and say, per year per year? Then I think watt should be replaced by kilowatt-hour which seems to be the standard for representing values like that. It is pretty weird to look at a table like this and see watts. You know, on second thought, this chart is pretty useless. It's for a single year 2003. I think it should be titled, "energy consumed per capita in the year 2003 by country." I think the numbers have probably changed over the last 6 years, especially in China and India. It should be clear identified that it's for 2003 in the title. --Lightenoughtotravel (talk) 22:16, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

The SI unit for energy consumption per time (ie power) is the Watt. Using kgoe also makes sense since economists often look at oil consumption per capita as a measure of a country's development. The GJ/year column never made any sense to me, but having it there is harmless. I've added the conversion factor to kWh in the Watt header; if you want to add it as a separate column, go ahead. Owen× ☎ 09:21, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

The intention, if I understand correctly, is to provide a sense of how much energy on average is used per capita in a year. I suggest the unit should be energy and not power (if someone asks how many kilometers you traveled in an hour, you say X kilometers, not 'X kilometers per hour'). Thus, all columns should be in terms of energy (the total energy used in a specific year, 2003 in this case, as we don't know here how much energy was used on any other year). Therefore, if the columns are to be given in kgoe and conversions of this, then column 1: kgoe; column 2: GJ (1 kgoe = 0.042 GJ, or 1000 kgoe = 42 GJ); column 3: kWh (1 GJ = 277.78 kWh). It seems simpler to me this way. --Evvp137 (talk) 21:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that as it currently is, and no matter what conversion you are using, the values of column 3 are wrong. --Evvp137 (talk) 21:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Replaced data with most recent (2010) data. Removed awkward units to a simple one of energy. Fixed values for fourth (kWh) column. --Evvp137 (talk) 02:54, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

So Watt is awkward, but kilowatt-hour-per-year is not? Your example of kilometres per year is excellent, except the correct analogy in our case would be to describe your annual travels in Mach-one-hours-per-year. The table is for power, not energy. The amount of energy per unit of time is power, normally measured in Watts. There is nothing sacred about the one year unit. The table shows energy consumption rates, which is a fancy name for power. If you wish to add a column showing the figure in kilocalories per fortnight, feel free to do so, but please don't remove the only column showing the figures in common SI units. However, I welcome the update of the figures to the 2010 ones. Owen× ☎ 17:23, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

European Union / Continents

Where is the figure for the EU per capita consumption ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.53.5.178 (talk) 05:09, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

• The EU is not a country. Drmies (talk) 05:16, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

• It would be interesting to have values also by continents, e.g. Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Total World etc., may be in a second table

--Sustainlogic (talk) 20:14, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Absolute numbers

it would be interesting to have absolute volumes of consumption as well. qatar may use most energy per capita - but is it relevant? how much % of world total energy consumtion is in qatar? --Sustainlogic (talk) 20:17, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

These are old data

128.3.12.231 (talk) Data in the table are over 10 years old now. Maybe this should be changed to "List of countries by 2003 energy consumption per capita" or similar? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.3.12.231 (talk) 17:53, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Image caption amounts to erroneous original research

The first image in the article contains the caption:

Social Progress Index vs Energy Use per capita. List of countries by Social Progress Index. This plot is empirical evidence that it is highly likely that an increase in energy consumption is needed to create more prosperity in a country.

The caption is speculative and appears to confuse necessity and sufficiency.

• The expression "is needed" is somewhat vague, but implies a necessary condition. That is, the caption claims the plot indicates that social progress is "highly unlikely" to increase in a country without an increase in energy consumption. In reality, increased energy consumption may be one of several different sufficient conditions for increasing prosperity.
• For example, Costa Rica obtains substantially higher Social Progress than any of several petro-states (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Russia) despite having a per capita energy consumption several times lower than any of them. It would be safer to conclude that Costa Rica must have vastly superior policies, social institutions, and/or individual preferences and values, which enable the country to get far more Social Progress "bang" for its energy "buck." When one country manages to get more than five times as much Social Progress per unit of energy consumed than another country, the plot shows that the quality of these non-energy factors is far more important to a country's prosperity than its energy consumption.
• And this follows from simple common sense. There are thousands of different ways for a country to increase its energy consumption, with each way having its own impact (positive, negative, or neutral) on Social Progress. For example, if everyone in a country buys a larger automobile, while average vehicle occupancy is unchanged, then all the extra energy consumption does nothing but wastefully move more metal mass and empty seats around. Similarly, if everyone who already has adequate illumination installs and runs twice as many light bulbs, the extra lighting accomplishes nothing except increasing light pollution (and other forms of pollution from electricity production). Other forms of energy consumption may actually degrade Social Progress, such as by spending the energy to produce more tobacco, alcohol, recreational drugs, gambling, obesity, and other unproductive or negatively productive vices.
• Furthermore, the plot does not prove that even the most efficient nations (those which obtain the highest Social Progress for a given per capita energy consumption) are getting as much Social Progress as might be possible at their present energy consumption. Again, simple observation suggests that few individuals anywhere are using energy as efficiently as possible. What is true for the individual must be true for a whole country full of individuals. Even Costa Rica, for example, might be able to slash its energy consumption by half without any reduction in Social Progress, simply by implementing state of the art energy efficiency technologies and methods, or by abandoning those forms of consumption that at best contribute nothing to Social Progress (such as tobacco).
• Rather, the plot shows that increasing a country's energy consumption is one of the least effective ways to increase its Social Progress, strongly subject to diminishing returns. The plot obscures this fact by plotting energy consumption on a logarithmic scale, thereby masking the atrocious inefficiency of countries such as Saudi Arabia compared to countries like Costa Rica. The exception would be the very poorest countries, in which per capita energy consumption falls below the minimal level for enabling most people to reach old age before dying. But once energy consumption rises above this low threshold (referred to as the "Goldemberg corner"), further increases in energy consumption become rapidly less effective for raising Social Progress.
• Again, this follows from common sense. If you give one light bulb (and electricity to run it) to a person who has never owned a light bulb, you can transform his or her life. But if you give that light bulb to a person who already has 100 light bulbs, it will probably make no difference. In the countries with high per capita energy consumption but little more Social Progress to show for it, much of the marginal social effort goes into things like advertising to persuade people to consume things they do not need. Or more specifically, to consume things that do not further increase Social Progress, which would include most things you see advertised on television (beer, vacations, luxurious automobiles, cosmetics, new clothing fashions to replace slightly-older clothes that are not yet worn out, etc.).

--Teratornis (talk) 04:30, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure what this includes

Hi. The article states "This is not the consumption of end-users but all energy needed as input to produce fuel and electricity for end-users." Does it include the highways needed to transport fuel trucks? Does it include the factories needed to build the fuel trucks? The farms to feed the drivers? The refridgeration for that food? What exactly do these numbers include? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.224.248.82 (talk) 18:15, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

An explanation can be found in the relevant page total primary energy supply. --Ita140188 (talk) 03:28, 15 May 2018 (UTC)