U.S. Energy Consumption

Energy consumption is a topic that has gained more and more significance over the past couple of years. As emerging countries continue to grow rapidly, the world’s total energy demand keeps rising. The growing demand is largely covered by fossil fuels, namely petroleum, coal and natural gas. Those fuels, however, are finite resources, and burning them emits large amounts of pollutants that contribute to climate change. Meanwhile, renewable energy sources are slowly becoming more efficient but are still far from able to cover the ever-growing global energy needs.

The United States is currently the world’s second biggest energy consumer after having been overtaken by China in 2009. A country ranking based on per capita energy consumption sees smaller countries in front. The United States is placed in the Top 20 behind Canada, Norway and Luxembourg, with the Top 10 dominated by very small and predominantly oil rich countries such as Qatar and Bahrain. China’s per capita energy consumption is only one fifth of the United States’ but the country’s sheer size makes it the largest overall energy consumer nevertheless.

Total primary energy consumption in the United States has been relatively constant for the past 10 years. Per capita energy consumption has even been following a very slight downward trend in the past three years, although preliminary data suggests that non-commercial electricity consumption per U.S. customer was higher in 2010 than it was in any of the preceding years.

The primary energy consumed in the United States comes from various sources: In 2010, fossil fuels accounted for 83.12 percent of the energy consumed; 8.61 percent was nuclear energy and the residual 8.18 percent came from renewable sources such as biomass, wind and hydroelectric energy. It is expected that the amount of energy from renewable sources will rise in the future, but it will likely take decades until renewable sources can replace fossil fuels to a considerable extent.
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