Think Small, Save Big

Day in and day out, no country uses more energy than America. Individual Americans, however, are far from being the world's biggest energy hogs.

How can that be? Simple: Size matters. There are a lot of Americans using a lot of energy. Some countries use more on a per capita basis, but have smaller populations.

Each year, the average American uses in energy the equivalent of nearly 59 barrels of crude oil, according to the Department of Energy. Other countries are more profligate. Cold climates often explain the difference. Canadians, for example, use the equivalent of 72 barrels of oil per person a year.

But other nations are far more frugal. Each German gets by with the equivalent of just 30 barrels a year. That's about half the energy an average American uses. So how do we explain that?

For sure there are lots of virtuous Germans, for whom living green is a fact of life. That might mean making the choice to bike instead of drive to the post office, for example.

But I'd wager Germans overall spend little more time each day choosing how much energy to use than do their American counterparts. I'd even venture to say that in a lot of ways that really matter, neither Germans nor Americans make that sort of choice at all on a daily basis. Yet Germans still manage to use just half as much energy.

Does that mean they somehow glide thoughtlessly, effortlessly — magically? — through each day using less energy? Not quite.

It's more likely Germans wake up in homes, neighborhoods and cities set up from the get-go to use less energy. It's the clotheslines hanging off their balconies and the tankless water heaters in their bathrooms that provide hot water only as it's needed. It’s also the fuel-efficient cars in their driveways, and a thousand other things. Germans don’t choose each day to use less; they can't help but use less.

Meanwhile, Americans rely on clothes dryers, conventional water heaters with tanks kept brimming with hot water around the clock, gas-guzzling SUVs and other conveniences of life in the U.S. of A. that often aren't very energy efficient. And so, Americans don't choose each day to use more; they can’t help but use more.

Sure, daily decisions can and do have an effect on energy use – like choosing to bike instead of drive. But I doubt they have as large an effect as do the types of decisions made, say, once a decade or more.

Take the refrigerator, which runs around the clock and uses more electricity than any other appliance in the American home. The country's 126 million fridges used 156 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2001. That's the energy equivalent of 92 million barrels of oil.

We don’t wake up each morning and decide how much energy our fridges will use that day. Instead, that's a decision we make on average just once every 13 years. That’s how long fridges typically last.

Ever more strict U.S. government standards ensure when we do pick out a new fridge, it's bound to be far more efficient than models from even a few years before. In 2001, those standards dictated that the average new fridge use 476 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, or half as much as just a decade earlier.

However, as of 2001, the fridge in the average American kitchen was using 1,239 kilowatt-hours a year. Why so much more? Because America was then, and still is today, saddled with a lot of old and inefficient fridges.

Americans buy about 10 million new refrigerators a year. At that clip, it takes more than a dozen years to swap out every fridge in America (assuming each old fridge is replaced once during that time).

So by the time 2013 or so rolls around, the average kitchen fridge should be a lot closer to the 476 kilowatt-hours-a-year standard than it was in 2001. The average fridge can’t help but use less energy at that point. But it still won’t turn its American owner German.

The government can tell us how efficient our refrigerators should be. But it can't tell us how big. Peek inside an average German kitchen and chances are you won't find a hulking, American-style fridge. Instead, much smaller models that use far less electricity are common. A quick check of a German online retailer recently found plenty of under-the-counter models that use between just 150 and 225 kilowatt-hours a year.

That's a reminder there's still a lot of room for personal choice when picking out a new fridge – or car or home, for that matter. And when it comes to energy efficiency, choosing small can make a big difference.

Andrew is a science journalist and author who has written several books for Sally Ride Science, including Earth’s Precious Resources: Clean Air.