Global 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:

Global Energy End Use. Industry = 52%, Transport = 26%, Commercial = 8%, Residential = 14%

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)

Click for a text description of the Global Energy End Use chart.

The image is a pie chart titled "Global Energy End Use," showing the distribution of global energy consumption across different sectors. The chart is divided into four segments, each representing a different sector with corresponding percentages:

Industry: The largest segment, colored in blue, represents 52% of global energy end use.
Transport: The second largest segment, colored in red, accounts for 26% of the energy consumption.
Residential: Represented by a purple segment, this sector uses 14% of the global energy.
Commercial: The smallest segment, colored in green, constitutes 8% of the energy end use.

Each segment is labeled with the sector name and its percentage, providing a clear breakdown of how global energy is utilized across these sectors.

Credit: David Bice @ Penn State is licensed under CC-BY-NC-4.0