The world's highest users of electricity
Of course, that's not always a good thing. If you're worried about high electric bills and energy consumption on your business premises, take heart! The United States doesn't even make it into one of these lists. If you're worried about your company's electricity consumption, maybe you should relocate to Iceland. That country has some of Europe's cheapest power prices – mostly due to its abundance of renewable resources like hydropower and geothermal sources – but also because there is no domestic mining industry to speak of (this means fewer fuel costs for generating stations). This is no small matter given that virtually all industrial facilities in Iceland are powered by electrical systems.
Among smaller economies, Singapore has some of Asia's highest energy prices due to its dearth of domestic resources. Another island nation, Taiwan, is also on that continent's priciest end of consumption. In both instances, though, these are far from being densely populated regions. And if we’re only looking at urban populations – which tend to have higher per-capita energy consumption – then Israel comes out on top for Western nations (at least for 2013). No one in their right mind would consider Israel a paradise for solar power generation given its climate (though Tel Aviv did receive 656 hours of sunshine in 2017), but it does have a lot of desalination plants fueled by electric pumps and a coastal location that makes wind turbine installations attractive options.
Electricity consumption per capita
It’s no secret that some nations use much more energy than others. Of course, population figures are a factor here; with more people living in any given country, there will be a higher electricity demand. But other factors go into consideration too—the number of factories and manufacturers is important, as well as each country’s level of technological development. The largest consumers of electric energy are usually those with large manufacturing sectors or strong technology industries—like Japan, Germany, and France. That said, there’s also a wide range of individual states within any one country. Below we take a look at two measures commonly used to gauge consumption rates: overall consumption and per-capita power use.
While overall consumption can be useful, it doesn’t tell us much about how people in different parts of a country compare to each other. For instance, while China has a higher per-capita use than France, that doesn’t mean that Chinese people use more power than those in France. This second measure takes into account population size and indicates roughly how much energy is used by each person living within a certain country. It’s important to note that these figures may not always reflect real-life conditions; sometimes they’re based on an official government estimate instead of actual readings taken at individual homes.
Countries with the highest power consumption
Norway, Sweden, and Finland seem to be on a little-known trend for their energy consumption per capita. Despite having access to very cheap hydroelectric power, these Scandinavian nations still use more than 40 gig watt-hours (GWh) of electricity per capita annually. To put that into perspective, it’s just a tad shy of New Zealand’s total consumption figure at 41 GWh. Norway is in first place with 47 GWh while Finland and Sweden come in second and third place with 45 GWh and 43 GWh respectively.
If you live in a country whose power consumption is half as much, then maybe you should be more concerned. There are several nations worldwide with such low power consumption that it's almost embarrassing. For example, Samoa - an island country with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants - uses only 1 GWh of electricity per year. That’s not enough to even supply Samoa’s capital city of Apia on its own and ranks at just 0.03% of Norway’s power consumption numbers annually. The same goes for other nations such as Haiti and Papua New Guinea which use far less electricity per capita than their larger neighbors.