THE first thing I did was turn off the lights. Then I unplugged everything. On reflection, I reconnected my fridge. Next, I made a list of all the other ways I consume energy. Gas-powered boilers heat my apartment and water. I cook on a gas stove. I take the New York City subway to work. For longer trips, I drive or hail a ride, and I fly. Then there’s the fridge, washing machine and dryer, elevators, a computer, phone, even my toothbrush. I add to the list anything I buy that requires energy to make and transport. Plus the food I consume or throw away. Nearly everything I do requires energy.
Energy is a hot topic right now. Rocketing fuel prices precipitated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the transition to renewable sources to limit global warming have focused people and governments on reducing consumption. With this in mind, I wanted to see whether I could drastically cut my energy use. I had read that, in the 1990s, Swiss researchers calculated that just 2000 watts per person would be enough for everyone to live sustainably and still have a good quality of life. So that became my target. This was the first day of a personal, month-long “2000-watt challenge”.
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I used an online – once I got the Wi-Fi back on – to estimate my current energy use. In the US, each person consumes energy at a rate of 8600 watts on average. I didn’t think my lifestyle was particularly extravagant, so I was surprised to find I use even more than that. Clearly, I had a long way to go.
A watt is a measure of power or, put another way, the rate of energy transfer (see “What’s watt”). For much of human history, people consumed little more energy than that which was embodied in the food they ate. On a per person basis, “that’s perhaps 90 watts on average”, says at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. Fuel for cooking and heating added more watts, as did animal power for agriculture and transport: 1 horsepower, a unit coined by inventor James Watt (after whom the watt is named) to promote his improved steam engine, is equivalent to 746 watts. Complex societies with construction, metalworking and pottery added a few hundred more. “The Roman Empire had a consumption of perhaps 500 watts,” says Nick. “And it didn’t use electricity at all.”
Today, industrialised societies use vastly more energy, exploiting mainly fossil fuels to power the global economy. The average total, or “primary”, energy consumption per person is highest in Iceland coming in at . The US, at 8600 watts, was number 11. By comparison, per-person energy use was around 4200 watts on average in the European Union, 3400 watts in China and 3300 watts in the UK. But there is massive inequality globally: people in India used 800 watts and in Bangladesh they used just 310 watts. The International Energy Agency estimates that lack access to enough energy for basic needs such as cooking and cooling.
The unprecedented increase in energy consumption in high-income countries – and the environmental consequences it entails – has prompted energy researchers to ask: when energy becomes available far beyond the minimum needed, what is sufficient to live well? It is a question worthy of Socrates. What constitutes enough? What is a good life? So it is hardly surprising that there is no consensus among economists or energy experts. “I’m not confident yet to define an actual threshold of sufficiency of material consumption,” says energy researcher at Yale University. “But I know it’s well below the maximum that you see in many countries.”
Two-thousand watts is one answer. Back in the 1990s, it was the amount of energy available to each person on Earth if all the energy produced was divided equally. Based on this and on studies that found diminishing returns to quality of life beyond this level of consumption, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich – equivalent to using 48 kilowatt-hours per day – was sufficient for each person in Switzerland to consume without sacrificing their enviably high standards of living. The team also concluded that aiming for the ambitious but feasible 2000-watt target would be a means of helping Switzerland reduce its greenhouse gas emissions (see “Energy sources and their emissions”).
Home energy use
I first read about the 2000-watt society in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future, which was published in 2020. From a not-too-distant future where Switzerland has achieved this goal, a chipper character points to the country as an example of the wisdom of using less: “It took paying attention to energy use, but the resulting life was by no means a form of suffering; it was even reported to feel more stylish and meaningful to those who undertook the experiment.” This notion that living at 2000 watts wouldn’t be so hard stayed with me and, when the price of energy jumped last year, I thought I would try it for myself.
The first thing to do was to estimate my total usage – which anyone can do with an online calculator. This also helped me see how my energy usage breaks down into different areas. Transportation accounted for about half, due almost entirely to flying. Food and other things I bought accounted for about a third, while home heating and electricity made up the rest. Probably because I live in a small apartment, this footprint was a bit different from the average US resident whose living and office space tends to make up the largest proportion of energy use, followed by transportation (especially by car), food and consumer items, electricity and finally their share of public infrastructure. In Europe, living and office space also make up the greatest share on average, but food and consumer items tend to use more energy than transportation.
In total, my energy use was running at 9400 watts. I was definitely going to need help if I were to have any hope of meeting the challenge.
First, I consulted a professor at Stanford University in California and founder of a sustainability think tank called the Rocky Mountain Institute. He is perhaps the world’s best-known energy efficiency guru and he walks the talk. He lives in a beautiful home he built in Colorado that features every energy efficiency hack imaginable. “It’s actually 6000-year-old passive Chinese solar architecture,” says Lovins. “I just updated the technologies.” His house has a rooftop tank that heats water with sunlight. Multi-paned windows improve insulation. The property was built facing south to get more heat from the sun, using materials selected for their small energy footprint. A greenhouse serves to both help heat the house and grow a crop of banana plants. All this means Lovins maintains a high standard of living while his home generates enough power to charge his electric vehicles and export some electricity to the grid.
With the right technology, the amount of energy needed to maintain a high standard of living is “probably under 2 kilowatts”, says Lovins, maybe even as low as 1000 watts. However, for most people, such technologies aren’t in reach yet. What’s more, those that are available don’t necessarily reduce our energy usage in the long term. That is because of the rebound effect, a well-known phenomenon by which people use the savings gained from efficiency to consume more. For example, as car engines have become more efficient, we have bought larger cars that require more fuel to power them.
Besides, adopting energy efficient technologies wasn’t going to help with my hastily organised 2000-watt challenge because I had just a month and no budget. So I decided to focus on the other approach to reducing energy consumption: altering my behaviour.
There were practical changes I could make straight away. For instance, I made sure nothing in my apartment was on or plugged in unless someone was using it. I air-dried clothes in the stairwell instead of using the dryer. I shared data from my electricity meter with a company called OhmConnect, which sent me a text when electrical demand was high and gave me an incentive to use less – in the form of “watt points” I could exchange for prizes – if I cut my use during that period. I found I could temporarily save around 150 watts by unplugging the fridge for an hour without opening the door.
All this certainly helped me save energy. But at best I had only reduced my usage by around 1000 watts. In fact, the online calculator had shown that electricity accounted for only about 5 per cent of my total, so I could have used none and still ended up far above 2000 watts. I would need to make other changes. So I took shorter showers and used cold water to wash dishes. I continued to bike whenever the weather permitted and took the subway when it didn’t. I bought more of my groceries from the farmers’ market down the street than from the supermarket. And I ate more vegetarian meals.
Reducing energy waste
All this only took me down to 5700 watts according to the calculator, with many of those savings coming from not flying. One big problem was the aging gas boiler heating my poorly insulated 120-year-old apartment. It was a major cause of my surprisingly high energy use – but also beyond my control. As in many old buildings in New York, my radiators are controlled by my landlord, who also lives in the building and likes it hot. In winter, the only way to cool down is to leave windows open. In summer, cooling requires inefficient window air conditioners. Reducing those watts would require retrofitting the building with energy efficient heat pumps and improving the insulation. But as a renter, I couldn’t do that, even if I had the means.
The point here isn’t to complain about my radiators. What the story illustrates is that it is very difficult to live at 2000 watts unless you live in a 2000-watt society. “You start to get to a point that the society around you, the environment you live in, prevents you going beyond,” says , an architect who specialises in efficient buildings at the design firm Intep and a long-time proponent of making the US a 2000-watt society. What those limits are depends largely on where you live and how much money you have. For me, living in New York, walking or taking public transport is relatively easy. But in many other places, especially elsewhere in the US, people have no choice but to drive to work or to the grocery store. The changes required to address that aren’t something that an individual can manage.
“Much of what we do in society and life is a matter of how we organise society,” says Nick. He has been consuming 2000 watts or less for more than a decade, but living in Switzerland helps. In 2017, the government there . To that end, Swiss cities are boosting public transport infrastructure and making car use less attractive. They have also built and . From an average of about 6000 watts in 2000, per-person .
Beyond Switzerland, few other societies have adopted the 2000-watt target. But countries are focusing more on reducing demand for energy. Policies like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US, REPowerEU in the European Union and Japan’s have put hundreds of billions of dollars towards energy efficiency measures, such as retrofitting buildings and promoting the use of electric vehicles. Countries have rolled out energy awareness campaigns too, including in the UK.
The fuel crisis is one motivation. “That might be what will start to expand our consciousness,” says at the University of Victoria in Canada. Improved energy efficiency has already paid off: the International Energy Agency estimates that such enhancements among its member countries in 2022. Using less energy also cuts greenhouse gas emissions directly and makes decarbonisation easier to achieve. “If we electrify everything, we have to massively increase the size of our renewable energy system,” says Hoicka. That will be far easier if there is less demand. One widely cited study found that reducing energy demand through efficiency and changes like urbanisation and digitalisation could without the need for unproven carbon capture and storage technologies and without sacrificing economic growth in higher or lower-income countries.
As for my own humble 2000-watt challenge, I regret to say that it failed miserably, at least by its main measure. For now, inefficient buildings and infrastructure make it very difficult to consume at a rate of 2000 watts and maintain a high standard of living in the US without making a major investment in energy efficiency – and it isn’t much easier elsewhere.
But I did learn a lot (see “Six ways to use less energy”). And I don’t plan to stop trying to achieve 2000 watts just because this challenge is over. For instance, it is clearer to me that decisions about what I eat and how I get around are much more important than how long I leave the lights on. And next time I choose somewhere to live, I will be thinking more about how it is heated, how well it is insulated and how energy efficient the appliances are. That way, I can focus more on small actions that produce sizeable energy-efficiency gains.
This experience has left me more mindful about where the energy I use is coming from too. I feel less disconnected from the infrastructure and industrial activities that support my way of life. I am also more cognisant of the overabundance of energy available to me – and the unfairness that so many people don’t have enough. “Enough should be a human right, a floor below which no one can fall; also a ceiling above which no one can rise,” according to Robinson’s character from the future. “Enough is as good as a feast – or better.”
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What’s watt?
The watt is the unit of power used to describe the rate at which energy flows: 1 watt is equivalent to 1 joule per second. A 20-watt light bulb left on for an hour uses 20-watt-hours. Your electricity bill will show how many kilowatt-hours you have used (1 kilowatt is 1000 watts). Dividing that by the number of hours during the billing period will give your average continuous supply of electricity in kilowatts. The 2000-watt target – which can also be seen as 48 kilowatt-hours per day – refers not just to electricity, but to your total average primary energy consumption. In other words, it includes all sources of energy (things like gas, wind and wood), any energy used to produce those sources and the energy lost due to inefficiencies of conversion and transmission. To meet the challenge, this must not exceed an average of 2 kilowatts.
Energy sources and their emissions
Different energy sources produce different levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Coal burned to generate electricity creates more than burning natural gas, for example. And solar creates none. And there are also sources of emissions unrelated to energy such as food rotting in landfills. In the 1990s, when Swiss researchers first envisioned a 2000-watt society, it included a target for emissions equivalent to 1 tonne of carbon dioxide per person. Back then, there was more concern about running out of oil than about climate change. However, that target was revised to net zero in 2015, following the Paris Agreement, which committed countries to limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. To try to achieve this, Switzerland has aggressively invested in renewable energy in parallel with its work on energy efficiency. Since 2000, emissions resulting directly from energy use have decreased from 8.5 to 5.6 tonnes per person. However, during that period. The emissions target is still much more challenging than the energy target.
Six ways to use less energy
Turn down the thermostat:
We all have to keep warm, but staying a few degrees colder can save up to . Potential savings depend on many factors, such as the weather where you live.
Use less hot water:
Heating water accounts for around on average. Reduce this by using cold water to wash clothes, making sure the dishwasher is full and taking shorter showers.
Walk, cycle and use public transport:
One study found that public transportation use in the US saved the equivalent of .
Use efficient appliances:
Electric induction stoves are about . Search for labels on appliances that rate their efficiency.
Eat more vegetables, preferably locally grown:
Vegetarian diets use approximately a .
Retrofit your home:
Improving home insulation and using an energy efficient heat pump rather than gas or oil heating are big investments, but making them can cut energy use by , depending on where you live.
James Dinneen is an environment reporter for New żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ based in New York
