California Uses More Gasoline and Diesel than China
by Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada 
on 07.18.08
California is 35x Less Populous than China
Truly an amazing statistic, via Wired. According to the California Energy Commission, the state with its 37 million people uses more gasoline and diesel than any other country on Earth except the US as a whole. That's more than India with its 1.1 billion people. More than China with its 1.3 billion (California is 2.8% of China's pop.). So while demand has been increasing in China and everybody's talking about that, they forget to look at absolute numbers: 20 billion gallon of gasoline and diesel are used each year in California, 6.7 billion gallons more than in 1988.
Most of that Energy is Wasted
But what's really bad about that is that when you look at efficiency numbers (see the chart here), only about 20% of the energy contained in those gallons of fossil fuels are actually doing useful work. About 80% of their energy is simply wasted as heat. That has to change.
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