Americans and Energy Use

An interesting statistic that I came across the other day is that Americans make up 4% of the world's population but use 25% of the world's energy.

The most obvious place where that energy goes is our cars: we have more cars and bigger cars, and we drive a lot.

But, here is an interesting exercise: I know this sounds weird and geeky, so yeah, okay, I am: but one time I tried counting up all the electric motors in my house. Give this a try, and go room by room. It's very hard not to overlook any: I came up with around 60 or 70.

First, nearly every appliance in your kitchen has an electric motor. Your blender, mixer, coffee grinder, electric can opener, knife sharpener. There may be one or two in your microwave. Your refrigerator has a motor. Don't overlook the vacuum cleaner, washer, dryer. Your furnace has a blower motor and if you have central A/C, that's at least two or three motors.

In your bathroom—have you got an electric toothbrush, hair dryer, electric shaver, Water-Pik? Exhaust fan? Count even the battery-operated devices.

A CD player or DVD player has an electric motor. If you still have a VHS recorder or an audio cassette recorder, one of those has one or more motors. Any DVR will have a motor. Digital camera? A motor for the zoom action.

In the home office--inside your computer, your hard disk drive and any floppy drive each is a motor. Got a printer, too? Guess what, a motor. Paper shredder?

Include your garage. There's your electric garage door opener, one motor. In your car, you've got any number of motors: probably a number of electric motors under the hood, such as for the cooling fan and maybe fuel pump. And there's the heater motor, the starter motor; each power window. power mirror, or power seat has a motor. And your car has an audio system, which uses at least one motor for the tape and CD players. Then there's the car's air conditioning, at least a couple more.

Where is your count now? Dozens, I'm sure, maybe nudging 100. Now, how many motors does a person in a third-world country have, do you suppose?

Another exercise is to count the light bulbs in your house. Here, too, it may be hard not to overlook a few. Unless you live in a small studio apartment, the number is likely to be in the dozens.

Don't forget your closets, the outside of your house. Inside your microwave, your oven, your refrigerator (my refrigerator has three). The headlight on your vacuum cleaner. (You don't have to count LEDs, those tiny red and green and blue indicator lights that are so ubiquitous these days; those use a negligible amount of electric power.)

Think you're done? Oh, and there's the. . . .

So what was your total?

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein