History of energy consumption in the United States, 1775–2009 (2011)

Re:History of energy consumption in the United States, 1775–... by tobyjsullivan on Wednesday January 05, 2022 @04:44PM (#29815431)

I was curious so I estimated. If we take daily intake at 8000 BTUs (~2000 calories), then we get 0.015Q BTUs in 1800 (US population: 5M[0]), 0.22Q BTUs in 1900 (US population: 76M), and 0.82Q BTUs in 2000 (US population: 223M).

That's only humans. Factoring in all working animals, maybe we assume some multiple of that. 2x? 10x? 100x seems too much.

In the end, I'm not convinced it would be significant enough to warrant inclusion - even if only because US population was so relatively small.

This does lead me to wonder what the graph looks like for energy consumption per capita.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_Uni...

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Re:History of energy consumption in the United States, 1775–... by burntoutfire on Wednesday January 05, 2022 @04:54PM (#29815558)

Wood at the beginning of the period covered by chart is at 0.2 Q BTUs, so, using the 10x factor, food would be on the same order of magnitude.

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