100 watts per 1000 miles

When I give talks about energy I find most audiences confuse energy and power and seem to have a better grasp of the concept of power. So I often state energy use in terms of power ... power is just energy per unit time, so if you use a certain among of energy in a year, it is possible to state the use in terms of a average power expended over the full year.

Americans burn something over twelve thousand watts a year - think of it as 120 one hundred watt light bulbs left on all year. The world average is about 2,000 watts.

Flying in a fully loaded 767 on a domestic flight turns out to require about 100 watts per 1,000 miles flown in a year. So 20,000 miles of flying in a year alone equals the average world citizen's power use or twenty 100 watt lights left on all year.