The 2000-watt society is an environmental vision, first introduced in 1998 by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zurich), which pictures the average First World citizen reducing their overall average primary energy usage rate to no more than 2,000 watts (i.e. 2 kWh per hour or 48 kWh per day) by the year 20502050, without lowering their standard of living.
The concept addresses not only personal or household energy use, but the total for the whole society, including embodied energy, divided by the population.
Two thousand watts is approximately the current world average rate of total primary energy use. This compared, in 2008, to averages of around 6,000 watts in western Europe, 12,000 watts in the United States, 1,500 watts in China, 1,000 watts in India, 500 watts in South Africa and only 300 watts in Bangladesh. Switzerland itself, then using an average of around 5,000 watts, was last a 2000-watt society in the 1960s.
Beardy Guy Musings
Living and working in a tiny house the woods. I freelance as Beardy Guy Creative where I design and create websites, newsletters, annual reports and and all manner of graphics and documents. I experiment with ways to live a low impact life and write about the climate emergency, Apple and the iPad. Lately I've also been posting often about Israel's genocide against the Palestinians. Living on the traditional territory of: - O-ga-xpa Ma-zhoⁿ (O-ga-xpa) (Quapaw) - Očhéthi Šakówiŋ - Kaskaskia - Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo)