A joules is an amount of energy equal to roughly the heat required to raise the temperature of one cubic centimetre of water by 0.25 Celsius.
It is not a lot of energy so when we talk about our energy consumption, we get huge numbers. Statistics Canada calculated our collective 2021 energy demand as 8167 petajoules. That is 8,167,000,000,000,000,000 joules.
Large numbers are hard to comprehend but it works out to 204,175,000,000 joules per person in Canada or a continuous personal consumption of 6.5 kilowatts. Not that that really provides much of an improvement in understanding the amount of energy we consume.
It is a lot.
We get this energy from a wide variety of sources. Burning fossil fuels in the engine of our vehicle produces some of those joules. Burning natural gas in our furnace produces a significant chunk. And our electrical grid provides energy – whether it is wind, solar, hydroelectric, nuclear, or fossil fuels that is the source.
We are not even aware of much of our energy consumption. After all, our personal computer, television, stoves, fridges, smart phones, and other such devices are a small component of our consumption. Most of the energy is embodied in the goods we consume.
For example, there is roughly a gigajoule or 1,000,000,000 joules of embodied energy in a smart phone. This is not the amount of energy it will use over its lifespan. It is the amount of energy tied up in extracting and purifying the components of the phone and in assembling the whole thing.
For a computer, a television set, a smart refrigerator, or any other appliance, even more energy is involved. And we can add on the energy tied to food production or manufacturing your car or the absolutely-must-have pair of shoes and it quickly adds up.
We consume a lot of energy, almost 10 times the amount consumed by people 100 years ago. And it is this demand on our energy system which is leading to many of our modern problems such as climate change and microplastic pollution, overflowing landfills and toxic waste, and so on.
We need to change our relationship with energy. If we don’t, we will leave the world a worse place than when we found it.
Todd Whitcombe is a chemistry professor at the University of Northern B.C.
