How much energy do we need to lead a comfortable lifestyle?

Question

How much energy do we really need to lead a comfortable lifestyle? and how much do we use monthly on average?

btw please tell me where u got this information

Answer 1

First you have to define your terms....

Who do you mean by "we"?  Energy use varies widely even between industrialized nations.

Next, what's "need" versus "want"?  Does anyone really need a 42-inch plasma screen TV that sucks 800 watts?  Does anyone really need a vehicle that weighs 4000 pounds?  How many people really need cars at all?  A lot of us would be healthier if we rode bicycles to work, like they do in the Netherlands.

Last, what's a "comfortable lifestyle"?  Does it require flying to far-away places for vacations?  Skiing behind power boats?  If you mean clothes, roof and food in a peaceful and secure social milieu, we can do that with very little energy if we spend the effort to do it that way.

Once you start defining those terms, it gets interesting. ;-)

The USA uses roughly 100 "quads" (quadrillion BTU) of energy per year.  This is roughly 11 kilowatts of raw energy (mostly in the form of fuel) per person, 24/7/365.

Answer 2

a lot

Answer 3

In theory, if we were to switch over to solar power as our main energy source, we could use as much energy as wanted or available with no repercussions to the world's environment.  The average house can easily be run by solar power.  The only problem is the initial expense of solar panels, but they end up being money-savers in the long run. This would irraticate the need for nuclear power plants.  The world is vast with natural energy sources, why should we use an energy source that creates nuclear waste, which is extremely hard to store, and can have a half-life of over 1000 years.  

um . . . I'm pretty sure that didn't answer your question, but still something good to think about.

Answer 4

I will acknowledge that living north of  the 60th N parallel  presents very different situation of need for energy, and living, and living south of 30 N likewise.

I live at about 46N, A FAVOURED zone from the perspective of solar energy. We Can live entirely without outside sources of energy, outside being from off  our farm. We use for heat only sun and fallen limbs, a few trees cut to keep others growing well.

But we do use some electricity that we do not generate... close to 500 watts on average, and we do drive an Accent car, about 800 km per month. Now that is an 80% reduction from 1990 when we started tracking it. I estimate we could cut both of those uses by a further 80%, at which point it would be a small effort to generate our own solar electricity, and switch to an electrically powered pedal assisted 4 wheel bike for 2,

I think we would likely drive even fewer km with that.

Overall, I think we could get along with 150 to 200 watts,  It would be a slightly more restricted lifestyle.

For comparison, in Ontario where I live, average electrical usage per home is 600 kWh per month or 20 kWh per day...  average, when they are heating with natural gas or oil. The gas or oil represents about 30 kw per day.  We typically see transportation usage about the same as heating or cooling. Industrial and commercial use of power used on our behalf then exceeds all domestic consumption.

Answer 5

the average home energy consumption is about 0.5 kw, and about 50% additional energy is required for vehicular transportation per family. however, every thing we consume requires energy too.

Answer 6

It is said that 1 gigawatt will supply 775,000 homes.  One megawatt will supply 775 homes

That's I guess based on the average consumption now.

Hoover Dam puts out 2 gigawatts

A medium size Nuke plant 2 gigawatts

We can have a nearly all solar electric grid in this country using  concentrating solar in the southwest.  Concentrating Photovoltaic solar and concentrating solar thermal power plants.   They already are capable of producing competitively priced eclectricity.  There are several being built or in planning and proposal stage in California.

If you go to the website Green Wombat there are several stories about these projects.

The proposed plants are from 175 megawatts to 900 megawatts.  Two of the companies are building factories to mass produce the parts for the solar plants.  These need to be in high sunlight areas like the southwest desert.  

There is a plan drawn up to convert the U.S. electric grid  to 65% solar by 2050 and nearly 100% by 2100

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-so...

click this lind to Scientific American to read about it.

http://www.skyfuel.com/

http://www.ausra.com/

http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/

Those are links to companies that build solar thermal plants.