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Does that use a lot of energy?

hannahritchie.github.io

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Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#61

Post by stdbrouw »

sixo wrote: post #32
quotemstr wrote: post #2

I like the comparison concept. It's like that "order of magnitudes every programmer should know" list, but applied to anyone who cares about energy. That said, and hot take: people shouldn't worry about energy independent of what they pay for it. The whole point of a price is to fold a complicated manifold of scarcity-allocation into a set of scalars anyone can rank against each other. Appealing to people's sense of…

Your dismissal of moral concerns is not convincing. Imagine a world where the only energy you do is use was generated by a stationary bike you had to ride yourself. You would, generally speaking, use that energy differently than energy you would pay for--you would generally reserve your effort for worthwhile things, and would be averse to farming energy yourself just to power frivolity or vice. How you determine what…

Doesn't this argument hinge on equivocating between two different definitions of aversion, though? I'm averse to bananas, but that doesn't mean I think it's immoral to eat them. The moral dimension kicks in if somebody else had to ride that stationary bike for you, because then you'd be wasting their time on frivolities.

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#62

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dylan604 wrote: post #42
MerrimanInd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When one gets in the weeds on EVs or ICE cars two things become shockingly clear: internal combustion is hilariously inefficient YET gasoline is hilariously energy dense. Most people's intuition is wrong on both of these points but then they cancel each other out. Edit: another important point is that the "cost" to acquire gasoline is only the very end of the process. The energy has already been gathered, stored, and…

Train locomotives have used diesel powered generators that then powers electric motors. Would this be less efficient than battery powered EVs? Or better asked, what would be the most efficient use of gasoline?

Nissan makes a range of these under the e-power branding:

https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/INNOVATION/TECHNOLOGY/ARCHI...

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#64

Post by ForHackernews »

Doesn't show the comparative energy waste of bitcoin?

This source[0] says

> One Bitcoin now requires 854,400 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce. For comparison, the average U.S. home consumes about 10,500 kWh per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, April 2025, meaning that mining a single Bitcoin in 2026 uses as much electricity as 81.37 years of residential energy use.

[0] https://www.compareforexbrokers.com/us/bitcoin-mining/

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#65

Post by 0x53 »

philipkglass wrote: post #9

The author Hannah Ritchie works on Our World In Data and also publishes the fantastic Sustainability by Numbers substack. It's in the same vein as the late, great David MacKay's Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air . This tool has its own recent substack post. See the comments too, especially the one by Chris Preist that contextualizes the energy usage of streaming video (a topic that has also been discussed on HN…

And wrote a great book: Not the End of the World

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#66

Post by ssl-3 »

The presentation is nice, but some of the conversions are questionable.

For instance: The cost section, wherein 1kWh in the US is figured as having a cost of 9.7 cents.

In reality, it's not that way at all. Unless we're fortunate enough to live in an area where we can walk over to the neighborhood generating station and carry home buckets of freshly-baked electricity to use at home, then we must also pay for delivery.

On average, in 2025, electricity was 17.3 cents per kiloWatt-hour -- delivered -- for residential customers in the US.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#67

Post by einpoklum »

jfengel wrote: post #51
dylan604 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Train locomotives have used diesel powered generators that then powers electric motors. Would this be less efficient than battery powered EVs? Or better asked, what would be the most efficient use of gasoline?

When it comes to the environment the most efficient use is to leave it in the ground. Hybrids work for trains because they are so large and don't need big swings of acceleration or to climb steep grades. They can run the diesel generators at maximum efficiency. Battery power would be better, because you can build even larger power plants running at higher heats and not have to haul them with you, but the costs of suf…

Isn't it better for trains to just to draw from the electric grid?

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#68

Post by RobinL »

One thing missing but important to understand is the energy embodied in buying 'stuff'. At a very rough approximation, the cost of stuff, especially consumer goods manufactured cheaply, is quite a high percentage energy.

When you look at people's energy usage, quite a lot of it ends up being the embodied energy in the stuff they buy. For quite a lot of people, it's probably the largest category of energy consumption. I once had a very rough go at calculating this here: https://www.robinlinacre.com/energy_usage/

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#69

Post by philipkglass »

ssl-3 wrote: post #66

The presentation is nice, but some of the conversions are questionable. For instance: The cost section, wherein 1kWh in the US is figured as having a cost of 9.7 cents. In reality, it's not that way at all. Unless we're fortunate enough to live in an area where we can walk over to the neighborhood generating station and carry home buckets of freshly-baked electricity to use at home, then we must also pay for delivery…

I looked at the electric car example for the United States. It has 3 kilowatt hours priced at $0.51, 17 cents per kilowatt hour, which seems about right. The "petrol car" example at the top of the chart isn't powered by electricity so its cost number is not directly comparable to the things that consume electricity.

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#70

Post by mikepavone »

skybrian wrote: post #56

I see it has a ChatGPT median query, but for those of us using coding agents this isn't so relevant. Here's a post that makes an estimate: https://www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01-20-cc-impact/ > So, if I wanted to analogize the energy usage of my use of coding agents, it’s something like running the dishwasher an extra time each day, keeping an extra refrigerator, or skipping one drive to the grocery store in favor…

I'm not sure it's even a particularly relevant comparison to an hour of use of various other electronic devices. I'm sure the median user is running a lot fewer queries than a Claude Code power-user, but I would guess it's still more than one in a typical session.
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