I thought this was fairly interesting. It compares countries’ energy consumption taking into account both domestic consumption and consumer consumption, ie, how much energy goes into the production and transportation of goods that the country imports.
The UK fares fairly badly by way of proportion, consumer consumption of energy being approximately 1/4 higher than domestic consumption.
However, when you delve into the figures that is only because our domestic consumption is so relatively low. In fact, both our domestic consumption and consumer consumption of energy, per person, is one of the lowest in Europe.
So, for example, per person in the UK we consume 82 megawatts of energy per year. 36 of this is domestic consumption and 46 is consumer consumption (ie, imported energy costs) [2020 figures].
These are the energy costs of other large European nations ranked in order of total energy consumption per person per year.
Germany: 111 MW per year (52 domestic, 59 consumer)
France: 100 MW per year (46 domestic, 54 consumer)
UK: 82 MW per year (36 domestic, 46 consumer)
Italy: 72 MW per year (33 domestic, 39 consumer)
Spain: 67 MW per year (33 domestic, 34 consumer)
Those in developed countries definitely need to be reducing their energy consumption and making what energy they do consume greener.
Other countries of interest:
USA: 184 MW per year (87 domestic, 97 consumer)
Canada: 175 MW per year (93 domestic, 82 consumer)
Ireland: 172 MW per year (73 domestic, 99 consumer)
Norway: 154 MW per year (76 domestic, 78 consumer)
Netherlands: 146 MW per year (71 domestic, 75 consumer)
Australia: 112 MW per year (57 domestic, 55 consumer)
Russia: 107 MW per year (62 domestic, 45 consumer)
Japan: 105 MW per year (53 domestic, 52 consumer)
Denmark: 105 MW per year (46 domestic, 59 consumer)
Switzerland: 85 MW per year (32 domestic, 53 consumer)
Poland: 66 MW per year (33 domestic, 33 consumer)
China: 58 MW per year (30 domestic, 28 consumer)
South Africa: 54 MW per year (32 domestic, 22 consumer)
Brazil: 28 MW per year (14 domestic, 14 consumer)
India: 22 MW per year (11 domestic, 11 consumer)
*figures subject to rounding errors
Change since 2000. Countries in red, increased energy consumption per capita. Countries in green, decreased energy consumption per capita. Black font, no significant (+/-7%) change.