Energy Use and Units


Daily Energy Use and Carbon Emissions, by Bruce Logan (Published by Wiley)
Now available! (Electronic version only now; paper copies in February) ISBN: 978-1-119-83102-0

See the Links page for more information on this book, and to see reviews of 3 other books related to climate change by Michael Mann, Dieter Helm, and Bill Gates. These four books approach the subject of energy use and climate change from the different perspectives of an engineer, climate scientist, economist, and technologist.  

With so many different energy units being used, it is difficult to understand how much energy we really use in our lives.
You probably know you should eat 2000 Calories a day, but did you know that a Calorie with a capital C (it is a kilo calorie, or kcal) is different than a calorie with a lower case c (calorie)? How do you relate that energy in your food to energy for the electricity that you use in your home based on kilowatt hours (kWh)? How do either of these compare to the energy in natural gas that might be used to heat your homes, as your gas bill is likely in units of CCF (a hundred cubic feet) or therms?

If we are going to successfully reduce our CO2 footprint, we need to use less fossil energy! But the first thing we need to do is figure out how much energy we already use for our home, car, and travel, and how we can make adjustments in our energy consumption in order to decrease our personal CO2 emissions.

The key to altering our current lifestyles of energy use is understanding energy use and CO2 emissions in numbers that make sense. Start with the D tab to be introduced to the daily energy unit D. After that, go to the C page to learn about your daily CO2 emissions in units of C.  Finally, you can wade into the examples on energy use and carbon emissions, and make some of your own calculations on how much energy you use so you can begin the process of reducing your D and C footprint!

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Last updated: February 8, 2021