How much energy does it take to power your life? This article from Julian Spector of CityLab highlights a fascinating effort by SaveOnEnergy.com, that aims to take the complex measurement of energy use and put it in terms of something that we can all understand: the human body.
One of the benefits (and dangers) of modern living is that we can use energy without having to work for it or think about where it comes from.
To make it easier to contextualize the energy usage of basic daily activities, researchers at the online energy marketplace SaveOnEnergy.com converted these tasks into units of human activity. Any physical action – walking up a flight of stairs, lifting weights, taking out the trash – uses energy, just like turning on the light switch. Comparing those units, though, shows just how much we benefit from electric power permeating our lives.
Checking your email and reading the news on a laptop is the least energy-intensive routine activity on the list. Still, it requires the same energy as climbing almost 29 flights of stairs, equivalent to walking up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. That’s nothing, though, compared to the energy it takes to make a cup of coffee. That vital, life-giving task requires the same energy it would take to scale 383.3 flights of stairs, equivalent to the total height of two Empire State Buildings.
