233 points by speckx 11 days ago | 222 comments on HN
| Moderate positive
Contested
Low agreement (3 models)
Product · v3.7· 2026-03-16 01:55:45 0
Summary Energy Literacy & Democratic Knowledge Advocates
This interactive tool advocates for energy literacy through transparent, accessible data comparison across products and activities. The content champions informed decision-making by providing methodologically rigorous energy consumption estimates with detailed methodology and multi-country cost data, supporting users' participation in energy policy discourse. Overall direction is strongly positive toward human rights, particularly free expression, education access, scientific participation, and informed citizenship.
Rights Tensions1 pair
Art 25 ↔ Art 27 —Energy consumption for adequate standard of living (heating, cooling, transport) may conflict with participation in scientific understanding of climate impacts; tool addresses tension by enabling informed trade-off assessment.
The author Hannah Ritchie works on Our World In Data and also publishes the fantastic Sustainability by Numbers substack. It's in the same vein as the late, great David MacKay's Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air.
This tool has its own recent substack post. See the comments too, especially the one by Chris Preist that contextualizes the energy usage of streaming video (a topic that has also been discussed on HN before).
It was genuinely a surprise to see how much relative energy petrol cars use (and shame on me - I'm an electrical engineer). I mean I think I knew it intuitively, but this simple chart blew my mind.
I can't find a github or email for Hannah - if you're reading this i'd like to add Australian energy price data via Open Electricity[0] to the data (reach out via my profile)
For reference it would be good to have per-passenger numbers for "sitting on a diesel bus", "sitting on an electric bus", "sitting on a tram", "sitting on a commuter train" as well.
I think stuff like this really crystalises how people misunderstand how much energy stuff uses.
My parents for example sweat the small stuff and go around the house turning LED driven lights off to "save electricity" even though it would barely make a dent in their bill.
Granted, they come from a time of incadescants burning 60-100w at a time so I can see why that habit might be deeply ingrained.
> So, if I wanted to analogize the energy usage of my use of coding agents, it’s something like running the dishwasher an extra time each day, keeping an extra refrigerator, or skipping one drive to the grocery store in favor of biking there. To me, this is very different than, in Benjamin Todd’s words, “a terrible reason to avoid” this level of AI use. These are the sorts of things that would make me think twice.
I attached a generator with some supercaps and an inverter to a stationary bicycle a few years ago, and even though I mostly use it as a way to feel less guilty watching Youtube videos, it does give me a quite literal feel for some of the items on the lower end of the scale.
- Anything even even halfway approaching a toaster or something with a heater in it is essentially impossible (yes, I know about that one video).
- A vacuum cleaner can be run for about 30 seconds every couple minutes.
- LED lights are really good, you can charge up the caps for a minute and then get some minutes of light without pedaling.
- Maybe I could keep pace with a fridge, but not for a whole day.
- I can do a 3D printer with the heated bed turned off, but you have to keep pedaling for the entire print duration, so you probably wouldn't want to do a 4 hour print. I have a benchy made on 100% human power.
- A laptop and a medium sized floor fan is what I typically run most days.
- A modern laptop alone, with the battery removed and playing a video is "too easy", as is a few LED bulbs or a CFL. An incandescent isn't difficult but why would you?
- A cellphone you could probably run in your sleep
Also gives a good perspective on how much better power plants are at this than me. All I've made in 4 years could be made by my local one in about 10 seconds, and cost a few dollars.
Doesn't show the comparative energy waste of bitcoin?
This source[0] says
> One Bitcoin now requires 854,400 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce. For comparison, the average U.S. home consumes about 10,500 kWh per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, April 2025, meaning that mining a single Bitcoin in 2026 uses as much electricity as 81.37 years of residential energy use.
The presentation is nice, but some of the conversions are questionable.
For instance: The cost section, wherein 1kWh in the US is figured as having a cost of 9.7 cents.
In reality, it's not that way at all. Unless we're fortunate enough to live in an area where we can walk over to the neighborhood generating station and carry home buckets of freshly-baked electricity to use at home, then we must also pay for delivery.
On average, in 2025, electricity was 17.3 cents per kiloWatt-hour -- delivered -- for residential customers in the US.
One thing missing but important to understand is the energy embodied in buying 'stuff'. At a very rough approximation, the cost of stuff, especially consumer goods manufactured cheaply, is quite a high percentage energy.
When you look at people's energy usage, quite a lot of it ends up being the embodied energy in the stuff they buy. For quite a lot of people, it's probably the largest category of energy consumption. I once had a very rough go at calculating this here: https://www.robinlinacre.com/energy_usage/
> Gas heating (Single room) (1 hour of use) -- 2700Wh.
Wow dude, your room is very-very poorly insulated. Having a 2700W heater turned on constantly just for one room is a lot. If it's 0C outside and 20C inside, a typical room should not lose more than 500W, but better be in 200--400W range .
Kind of a stretch to suggest that an internal combustion vehicle requires 3x more "energy" to move it than an equally physics-burdened (weight, friction, etc) electric vehicle...
This is only "true" if the energy stored in the vehicle's battery got there without any relevant conversion inefficiency; If those joules came from a gas-fired plant, overall efficiency is only about 35-40%: comparable to a typical internal combustion powered-automobile or actually worse than a diesel automobile.
Why does their air con take 1kW to run? I wonder how much below ambient they are setting their temperature, and how old that aircon is and how bad the insulation?
The washing machine seems also inefficient.
My dryer is also a lot more efficient than theirs, at least if Miele's app is to be believed about how much it uses each cycle.
We need an equivalent for water as well! Almost none of the public has any idea about water use across the industrial, agricultural, and residential sectors...
Interestingly, the latest generation of LED lights are so efficient that it makes little financial sense to bother having a light switch. 330 lumens per watt from recent Phillips bulbs!
The cost of having an electrician wire that switch is probably more than a little 2.5 watt light will use in it's lifespan - particularly when you account for the fact lights in hallways are probably in use most of the time anyway.
Add in the effort of switching the light switch a few times a day for many years and it's certainly the case! Or the risk of fumbling in the dark for a light switch at the far end of a room or in a house you aren't familiar with.
Obviously you might still want to turn it off for maintenance, but you have the breaker for that.
Nice! A small note: airfryer tend to cycle on/off much less then slow-air/static ovens so they consume way more per unit time, gas ovens never fully stay "off" when operating, they just reduce the flames.
How does it make sense to compare renewable vs non-renewable energy sources?
Where does that electric car's energy come from?
Suppose the electric car's energy is solar. Then driving the electric car consumes zero barrels of oil, and so is infinitely more renewable than the petrol car. Or how efficient is the electric car at capturing available energy? Maybe the petrol car is 20% efficient at capturing available oil reserve energy. But the electric car is like 1e-30% efficient at capturing available solar output. Incomparable.
I wanted to write an app like this. Here's what I think would be useful for some people to compare: more checkboxes that represent typical daily activities like "how much energy does driving to the grocery store (x miles away) use" or "how much energy does idling in my car for 30 mins use", "how much energy does riding the bus/trolly/etc use", "how much energy does keeping my place warm vs kind of chilly", and also "how much energy does a cargo ship use to cross the pacific" or "how much energy does it take to source, manufacture, package, transport, and stock a pack of bubblegum". I think that would help people realize the largest components of their footprint and also how it relates globally.
When one gets in the weeds on EVs or ICE cars two things become shockingly clear: internal combustion is hilariously inefficient YET gasoline is hilariously energy dense. Most people's intuition is wrong on both of these points but then they cancel each other out.
Edit: another important point is that the "cost" to acquire gasoline is only the very end of the process. The energy has already been gathered, stored, and most of the processing is complete. Our cost (in money and energy) to "make" gasoline is really just gathering it. This is why the comparison to renewables is often a hard sell, it's just apples to oranges. Gasoline started on third base, renewables are batting from the plate. Some of the internal combustion enthusiasts are holding up e-fuels or synthetic fuels as the solution but then we have to pay for the entire energy gathering and processing pipeline and still be using a conversion method that's not at all efficient. It's the worst of both worlds.
In Japan, my country, this looks a bit different. A lot of electricity still comes from oil- and gas-fired plants. The mechanics differ (gas turbines vs. car engines), but in both cases we’re still relying on combustion. I suppose some countries have the same issue.
1 chatgpt query is a little misleading though. Let's see an 8 hour full bore claude code agent session. Or maybe running 3 agents for several hours a day.
I looked at the electric car example for the United States. It has 3 kilowatt hours priced at $0.51, 17 cents per kilowatt hour, which seems about right. The "petrol car" example at the top of the chart isn't powered by electricity so its cost number is not directly comparable to the things that consume electricity.
I'm not sure it's even a particularly relevant comparison to an hour of use of various other electronic devices. I'm sure the median user is running a lot fewer queries than a Claude Code power-user, but I would guess it's still more than one in a typical session.
Where I am at least, people using less power because power because power need to profit more, is wild.
They literally had record profits the last few years, rather than being forced to lay down solar. I think power should be a global endeavor, not some local for profit business with complete regulatory capture that makes competition illegal.
Yes I'm angry, because I pay more in electric than most anywhere in the world. If I charge my care with LEVEL 2 using city provided charges, during the day, it's more expensive than gas.
Amazing stuff, have you written up a blog post? I could see a video being a fun format for this as well. Might help people develop the intuition for watts/power consumption in a different way
I turn LED lights off because of the difference in operational life, and I don't like changing bulbs. M GE bulbs say they have a rated lifetime of 13 years......at 3 hours of usage per day. So if they don't get turned off, then that 3 hours can very easily become 12, and now you are at a rated lifetime of ~4 years instead.
Once I did a little bike training and looking at my power curve, I was incredibly impressed by how cheap energy is. 100W is an all day number, 200W less so, 300W is exactly 20 minutes when I do an FTP test. 400W is 4x Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar for an hour and he's a mutant. 1 horsepower is under a minute iirc, definitely under 2. 1kW is maybe 10 seconds. So I could keep my laptop and phone charged probably indefinitely as long as I have food, but not a ton more than that.
The marginal cost of one extra passenger is going to be very nearly zero. The vast majority of the cost is just moving the bus / train / plane, and the overhead / inefficiencies in the system. I've seen somewhere the numbers for one passenger on trains and planes but I can't remember where that was. Just know it is a very very small amount for the added weight of one more passenger.
I end up shrugging. For a Claude Code power user, today, a day's use uses less electricity than a morning commute in an electric car. To say nothing of the costs to keep your workstation running, your building heated or cooled, etc. Not quite a rounding error, but a relatively minor component of overall usage.
The ridiculously dramatic drop in power we dedicate to lighting is one that is just tough for folks to internalize. As you said, used to, you could have ~10 lights in your house that would add to upwards of 1kw. Nowadays, you can have 50 lights and barely hit 500w. Just mind blowing how far we dropped energy on those.
Same goes for televisions. Your modern TV is probably closer to the basic light bulbs before LEDs.
I'm assuming the general trend is true for all things solid state. That said, lighting is by far the biggest drop for most houses. Remarkably so.
Did you try charging an e-bike with your contraption?
I don't know what you can take of this, maybe you can see it as advance pedaling, or to get a feel for energy conversion losses. Anyways, it is the kind of harmlessly stupid idea that I would want to try just because I could.
The electric shower also seemed pretty optimistic. I live in an area with about 50°F/10°C ground temperature and my 14.4 kW water heater can just keep a relatively efficient shower head flowing at a comfortable temperature.
Right, a lot of discussion about the energy economy of transportation would probably be better framed using units of people-miles or cargo-miles, per unit energy.
The author is in the UK, so they probably looked at a product like [1] which is "ideal for rooms 16-26m²" and has cooling power consumption of 1005W.
Residential air conditioning in the UK often involves small, noisy units that are only used for a few weeks at the height of summer. They'll have a thermostat built in, sure, but the user will eagerly turn them off when the room's cool just to get some quiet.
Yup. In my experience, average non-nerd folk very very little feel for this stuff. I suspect some believe energy consumption of phone vs car is basically a toss up.
Tool directly supports right to participate in cultural and scientific life by democratizing access to energy science and enabling informed participation in environmental governance. Transparent methodology connects tool to scientific community and enables users to engage with empirical energy data.
FW Ratio: 63%
Observable Facts
Tool presents energy consumption as scientific data with named, verifiable sources: 'Eurostat, Ofgem, and the US EIA.'
Methodology section includes explicit sourcing for each product category, enabling users to trace claims to scientific literature.
Download PNG and copy URL functions enable users to participate in knowledge dissemination and scientific discourse.
DCP notes mission explicitly 'aims to democratize understanding of energy consumption and inform personal/societal decision-making' and 'supports informed participation in energy policy discourse.'
Interactive tool enables users to conduct exploratory analysis—a form of scientific participation—without requiring formal training.
Inferences
Free access to energy science data removes financial barriers to scientific participation.
Transparent methodology enables non-specialists to engage with and evaluate scientific claims, supporting democratic participation in science.
Tool serves as bridge between scientific data and public understanding, supporting public engagement with energy science.
Content explicitly supports freedom to seek and impart information. Detailed methodology, sources, and disclaimers demonstrate commitment to truthful, verified information sharing. Transparency about assumptions and limitations enables informed critical evaluation.
FW Ratio: 63%
Observable Facts
Methodology section provides detailed sourcing for all energy estimates with named references: 'Eurostat, Ofgem, and the US EIA.'
Disclaimer explicitly states 'numbers represent typical products and usage' and 'might not reflect your own personal circumstances,' signaling limits of tool's claims.
Page includes structured sections: Description, Methodology, Change log—enabling users to verify and trace claims to sources.
Author identified by name: 'This tool was built by Hannah Ritchie.'
Tool supports multiple data formats for output: 'Copy URL, Download PNG' options enable information sharing and re-use.
Inferences
Detailed methodological transparency demonstrates commitment to enabling users to evaluate claim credibility independently rather than accepting conclusions on authority.
Disclaimer and caveats signal editorial integrity by acknowledging uncertainty and limitations rather than overstating conclusions.
Multiple representation formats (interactive, downloadable, shareable) support diverse modes of information dissemination.
Tool directly addresses responsibility to community by enabling informed participation in energy sustainability decisions. Transparent disclosure of energy use differences supports understanding personal and collective impact on shared environment. Methodology emphasizes variability and uncertainty, promoting balanced judgment.
FW Ratio: 63%
Observable Facts
Disclaimer states 'often difficult to understand whether activities matter a lot or very little for our overall energy consumption,' emphasizing collective scale and shared environmental impact.
Tool enables comparison across consumption scales: LED bulbs (10W) to heating systems (kW+), supporting understanding of relative impact.
Disclaimer notes 'actual energy consumption will vary a lot depending on factors,' promoting epistemic humility and nuanced judgment rather than deterministic conclusions.
DCP notes tool 'aims to democratize understanding of energy consumption and inform personal/societal decision-making,' explicitly referencing community-level participation.
Share options enable users to educate others and support collective learning about shared energy systems.
Inferences
Tool supports community-level engagement with energy consumption data, enabling shared understanding of collective impact on environment.
Emphasis on variability and limitations promotes responsible, balanced judgment rather than deterministic or ideological conclusions.
Free, accessible distribution supports community-wide participation in energy literacy.
Tool explicitly supports education rights by providing accessible, structured learning about energy consumption. Free access, plain-language interface, and methodological transparency enable self-directed learning without educational prerequisites.
FW Ratio: 63%
Observable Facts
Page organized into categories (Lighting, Digital Technologies, Heating) with search box for independent discovery learning.
Methodology tab provides structured educational content with headings, bullet points, and source citations enabling self-paced learning.
Interactive tool allows exploratory learning through direct manipulation—users test hypotheses by selecting products and viewing results.
DCP notes 'responsive design with mobile-specific optimizations' and 'keyboard-navigable form inputs,' supporting diverse learner accessibility needs.
Plain-language descriptions without jargon enable learning for users without technical background.
Inferences
Free, barrier-free access removes economic obstacles to energy literacy education.
Interactive and self-directed design supports constructivist learning theory, enabling learners to build understanding through exploration.
Accessible interface design removes barriers for learners with disabilities or device constraints.
Tool supports informed decision-making about health and welfare through energy consumption understanding. Ability to compare heating, cooling, and appliance energy use supports household health and environmental well-being decisions.
FW Ratio: 60%
Observable Facts
Product list includes health-relevant items: heating, air conditioning, hot water heating—all tied to household thermal comfort and health.
Customizable usage parameters (hours, settings) enable users to model personal circumstances and health-relevant scenarios.
DCP notes 'accessible color contrast, keyboard-navigable form inputs, and alt-text considerations,' supporting inclusive engagement with health-relevant information.
Inferences
Accessible tool design removes barriers to understanding energy consumption choices that affect health and welfare.
Ability to model personal heating/cooling scenarios supports informed decisions about household thermal comfort and health.
Content frames energy consumption understanding as foundational to informed participation in energy discourse. Explicitly addresses gap in public comprehension of energy scale differences, supporting dignity and informed decision-making about environment and resources.
FW Ratio: 67%
Observable Facts
Page displays interactive comparison tool allowing users to select and analyze energy consumption of multiple products and activities.
Disclaimer states 'often difficult to understand whether activities matter a lot or very little for our overall energy consumption' and frames tool purpose as 'get a sense of the differences.'
Tool provides methodological transparency with detailed sources, assumptions, and caveats for each energy estimate.
Multiple countries' electricity, gas, and petrol prices are selectable for cost calculations.
Inferences
The tool's design assumes users have right to accessible, comprehensible information about energy systems affecting their lives.
Explicit disclaimer and methodology section signal commitment to informed consent and intellectual honesty rather than advocacy for particular conclusions.
Tool supports economic and social rights participation by enabling understanding of energy costs and consumption. Cost data enables informed decisions about household budgets and resource allocation.
FW Ratio: 75%
Observable Facts
Cost view tab displays energy costs in multiple countries based on 'average household prices' from Eurostat and national energy regulators.
Tool bridges technical energy data to personal economic impact through dual Energy/Cost view modes.
Pricing data described as based on '2025 or early 2026' data, indicating current relevance to household budgeting.
Inferences
Cost transparency enables users to connect energy consumption to household economic well-being, supporting informed resource allocation.
Tool indirectly supports social order for rights realization by providing information foundation for energy governance. Understanding energy consumption differences supports informed participation in establishing social and international order protecting environmental and economic rights.
FW Ratio: 75%
Observable Facts
Country selector lists 10 nations: UK, US, Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, Norway, Netherlands, Türkiye, enabling cross-national comparison.
Cost data sourced from national regulators, reflecting actual governance structures and price policies.
Tool enables users to understand how energy governance affects household costs and environmental impact.
Inferences
Multi-national data supports informed comparison of energy systems and policies across jurisdictions.
Content implicitly addresses equality of access to understanding energy systems. Tool treats all users equally regardless of technical background or prior knowledge.
FW Ratio: 75%
Observable Facts
No login, registration, or payment required to access the tool.
CSS includes extensive mobile optimization (media queries for 768px, 480px breakpoints) with larger touch targets and font sizes.
Search functionality with plain-language product names enables access for users without technical knowledge.
Inferences
Free, barrier-free access reflects commitment to equal treatment in distributing energy literacy information.
Tool indirectly supports democratic participation by enabling citizens to understand energy policy issues. Knowledge of energy consumption comparisons supports informed participation in energy governance decisions.
FW Ratio: 75%
Observable Facts
Tool explicitly frames purpose as supporting understanding of 'differences in energy consumption between different products,' which relates to policy-relevant decisions.
Free access without credential requirements enables broad participation.
Multiple country selection option (UK, US, Germany, France, etc.) supports engagement with energy systems across jurisdictions.
Inferences
Democratized energy literacy supports informed civic participation in energy policy debates, which constitute forms of democratic engagement.
Tool generates data about individual energy consumption but incorporates privacy safeguards through aggregated methodology (typical products rather than tracking individual usage).
FW Ratio: 80%
Observable Facts
Page source contains no external tracking scripts, analytics code, or third-party service calls.
DCP notes 'No advertising or tracking visible in provided content.'
Tool operates on client-side computation; comparisons exist only in user's local interface state.
No account creation or personal data collection required to use tool.
Inferences
Absence of tracking infrastructure respects privacy and personal autonomy in exploring energy consumption information.
Tool enables individual agency in understanding personal energy consumption choices. Charts and customizable parameters support self-directed learning.
FW Ratio: 75%
Observable Facts
Users select which products to compare via checkboxes and input custom usage hours via numerical inputs.
Two view modes (Energy and Cost) allow user-directed perspective shifts.
Chart updates dynamically based on user selections without requiring external tools.
Inferences
Interactive design patterns place decision-making agency with the user rather than presenting pre-determined conclusions.
No privacy policy or tracking disclosure observable on provided content.
Terms of Service
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No terms of service provided in accessible content.
Identity & Mission
Mission
+0.20
Article 27 Article 29
Tool explicitly aims to democratize understanding of energy consumption and inform personal/societal decision-making. Educational mission supports informed participation in energy policy discourse.
Editorial Code
+0.10
Article 19
Clear disclaimer and methodological transparency indicate editorial integrity and commitment to factual presentation limits.
Ownership
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Author identified (Hannah Ritchie). No corporate ownership or conflicts disclosed.
Access & Distribution
Access Model
+0.15
Article 19 Article 27
Tool accessible without paywall, registration, or advertising. Free access to energy comparison data supports universal participation.
Ad/Tracking
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No advertising or tracking visible in provided content.
Accessibility
+0.15
Article 25 Article 26
Responsive design with mobile-specific optimizations, accessible color contrast, keyboard-navigable form inputs, and alt-text considerations for chart visualization. Demonstrates proactive accessibility design.
Free, unrestricted access to scientific data (energy consumption, efficiency metrics) without paywalls or authentication. Methodology links to peer-reviewed sources (Eurostat, national regulators). Share and download features enable participation in knowledge dissemination.
Multiple information channels: tool itself, description tab, methodology tab with full source citations. Information presented without paywalls, registration, or algorithmic curation. Search and filter controls support independent information seeking.
Accessible design (high contrast, keyboard navigation, mobile optimization per DCP) removes barriers to understanding health-relevant energy decisions. Responsive interface ensures usability for users with varying physical accessibility needs.
Free access enables broad community engagement with energy data. Share functionality and downloadable outputs support community education and discourse. No algorithmic curation or influence tactics shape user understanding.
Share functionality (copy URL, social sharing menu) enables users to assemble around and collectively examine data. No content moderation, gatekeeping, or restrictions on group engagement visible.
Cost tab and country-specific pricing data support engagement with economic dimensions of energy consumption. Tool enables users to connect energy use to household finances.
Multi-country data (10 countries, multiple energy sources) supports comparative governance engagement. Ability to examine energy systems across jurisdictions enables users to evaluate policy effectiveness.
Tool design democratizes access to energy consumption data without paywalls or registration. Responsive, accessible interface structure supports universal participation in understanding energy systems.
Free, unrestricted access without registration or authentication barriers. Mobile-responsive design ensures equal usability across devices. Search and filter functions support navigation regardless of user expertise.
Transparent, accessible tool structure removes technical barriers to participation in energy literacy—a foundation for democratic engagement on energy policy.
No tracking, cookies, or personal data collection observable. No analytics or advertising infrastructure visible. Data remains local to user's browser session.
No access restrictions, authentication requirements, or content gatekeeping prevent any group from using tool. Design inclusive across devices and accessibility needs.