I do think there is something of a point there in that combined industrial and commercial use account for a larger portion of overall consumption. But, residential use is still significant.

This chart is old, but has a nice quick visualization of where you might want to focus.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/publ...

At least showing that for residential use, upgrading your AC, refrigerator, etc is probably higher impact than focusing on lighting.

1. Agreed, but whataboutism--and you may not mean it that way but your post sure sounded like it--is basically never helpful.

2. OK. Aluminum smelters and oil refineries and frigging box factories and everything else. Start summing up. Those numbers don't show what you want them to show, I'd wager.

3. I'm arguing that it is a hell of a lot better to go after the people who actively benefit from disproportionate use because they are causing the deepest externalities.

I don't know if this adds or detracts from what your saying but here in NZ 13% of power usage is aluminium smelting. 44% is industry, 32% commercial and 24% residential. Transmission loses 6% (not sure why the above totals add up to 100%, so it must exclude the losses).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_New_Ze...

I did some back of the envelope calculations and if everyone on the planet runs 1.4 20W lightbulbs (100W equivalent CFL) half the time, that comes to the amount of energy expended on smelting Aluminium.

Aluminium per year: 720000GWh

20W (100W equivalent CFL) Lightbulb on half the year: 87.6KWh

Aluminium = 8.21917808 × 10e9 lightbulbs

Probably wrong in many ways, but I'll post it here anyway.