• Question: Which Country uses the most energy and why?

    Asked by leahandjemima to Akram, David, Gill, Jack, laurenceharwood on 14 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Gill Menzies

      Gill Menzies answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      This depends on whether you mean most energy out of all countries, or most energy per person in that country. The highest energy use per capita (per person) is definately the United States. If everyone used the same amount of resources as the average North American we would need 5 planets 🙁

    • Photo: Akram Alomainy

      Akram Alomainy answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      I would agree with Gill and I believe they use 25% of the world’s energy 🙁

    • Photo: Jack Snape

      Jack Snape answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Yes, I agree with Gill and Akram.

      It’s interesting that we can try and measure ‘quality of life’ and look at how that is related to the energy we consume. The calculations show that you don’t need a huge amount of energy to have a decent quality of life. America uses more than it really needs, but the ‘quality of life’ is no better than it is in Europe. One reason for this is that America is a big place so they have to travel longer distances than we do … but they could definitely do more to cut down 🙂

    • Photo: Laurence Harwood

      Laurence Harwood answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      I’ve cheated here and gone to Wikipedia (so it must be true…….) Surprisingly the countries that use the most energy per person are several of the Arab states (because they burn lots of oil to work their air conditioning) and Iceland (because they use lots of free geothermal energy. The highest consumption per person is Qatar and the lowest is Bangladesh. Somebody in Qatar uses about 150 times more energy in a year than somebody in Bangladesh. The United States uses about half as much per person as Qatar but there are a lot more Americans than people in Qatar so the United States is the biggest consumer by far. I’ve just come back from Florida so I can say that is true.

      Look up this URL:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita

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