Assignment 1

With globalization and a technologically growing world population, world energy is rising; we can see it in the data.World energy is not just rising in consumption, but in supply as well. More and more energy is being produced year over year, as we can see in the graph. We can see that the amount of energy that was being created (TPES), has more than doubled from 6000  million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) to 14 000.

Although the source of the energy that we are using hasn't changed significantly between 1971 to 2013, we can see that there has been a bit of increase in the use of Biofuels and waste for energy supply as well as a larger difference in the use of natural gas. Other energy sources show an increase in energy as well, but those two categories show the largest difference as part of the energy supply from 1971 to 2013. The energy supply is growing however, because more resources are being consumed for technological advancements, and more devices that require some form of energy are being used every day across the world.

We can also observe some interesting facts about energy consumption between different countries in the world as well as their respective GDP. From the chart we can see that the United states has the largest GDP as well as the largest energy consumption, but only makes up 4.6% of the population. If we compare these statistics to China however, we can see that although China has more than 4 times the population of the United States, it produces 16 times less GDP, and uses 6 times less energy. This shows us that GDP isn't necessarily correlated to % of world population, which one might think it was; more people use more energy. However, one thing that can be observed is that GDP seems roughly correlated to GDP. This does make some sense, because a country that has a high GDP would use more energy for things like manufacturing as well as transportation for different goods and services. The higher energy consumption due to higher GDP might not be the full story. It could also be indicative of different lifestyles between the  average US citizen and Chinese citizen for example, in terms of things like diet, transportation, and other daily life tasks that would consume energy. The possibility of no correlation can be also further substantiated that other factors besides GDP affect consumption by looking at an example with the US and Japan.  Although Japan might have a smaller world GDP, the GNP (adjusted GDP, effectively) per capita is actually higher than the US. This would indicate that not only is the average Japanese citizen more productive (producing more GDP), but they are using less energy while doing it. The USA isn't far behind in terms of its GNP per capita, but its energy consumption is  more than twice as much. This indicates there is definitely more to the story than just numbers in terms of populations and output from an energy consumption standpoint.


Tying things to personal energy consumption, my current Carbon Footprint had a result of 30, which is above the  US average. I based my results oon me living in a studio apartment on campus at Northeastern, where there are certain variables that I cannot control. I had a large impact from cooling and heating and ENERGY STAR appliances. My driving results had little impact, because I only ever drive when I am at home outside of Boston. The largest impact I had was for flights though, because I have taken some long distance flights and some short distance flights in the past year.  For my food impact, it was very low, because I have been eating a whole foods plant-based diet for a few months now, and consume meat and other animal products very infrequently. Regarding recycling, I recycle as much as I can, and have little impact there. My future rating though, came in at 18, below the US average. My home energy was a lot less, driving less, flying went up though because I like to travel, and diet and recycling were about the same.