Total Energy Use and Related CO2 Emissions of American Household Consumption, 1997-2007

The energy and carbon quantification of U.S. household consumption is an important research subject of the human dimension of global change. This paper studies how U.S. household consumption contributed to national and global energy use and related carbon emissions from 1997 to 2007. The results clearly reveal that (1) U.S. household consumption was a dominant driving force of energy use and related carbon emissions at both national and global scales during the study period; and (2) annual growth rates of energy use and carbon emissions of U.S. household consumption were much higher than official statistics indicated. This paper suggests that a consumption-based accounting framework, in an open consumptionoriented economy, could serve as an important alternative to the existing production-based energy and carbon accounting framework for better reporting, analyzing, and helping mitigate national and regional energy use and related carbon emissions.