PrintGlobal Energy Uses
We are all aware of some of the ways we use energy — heating and cooling our homes, transporting ourselves via car, bus, train, or plane — but there are many other uses of energy that we tend not to think about. For instance, growing food and getting it onto your plate uses energy — think of the farming equipment, the food processing plant, the transportation to your local store. Or, think of manufactured items — to make something like a car requires energy to extract the raw materials from the earth and then assembling them requires a great deal of energy. So, when you consider all of the different uses of energy, we see a dominance of industrial uses:
Figure 3. Most of our energy is used in industrial applications, mainly in the form of electricity. We are generally the most aware of our use of energy in transportation because we pay for it on a regular basis. Data from International Energy Agency (iea.org)
Credit: David Bice