# How much energy does the world produce?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-energy-does-the-world-produce/815113>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 30, 2018, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-energy-does-the-world-produce/815113 "2018-05-30T06:08:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cjackson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a3d4f5/32.png) [@cjackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjackson)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2018, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-energy-does-the-world-produce/815113/1 "2018-05-30T06:08:35Z")

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In a year how much energy does civilization produce? How does it compare with the energy generated by hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, solar flares or other natural events?

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**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2018, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-energy-does-the-world-produce/815113/2 "2018-05-30T06:13:54Z")

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Strictly speaking, does it “produce” any, or simply convert/release it from some other form?

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**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2018, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-energy-does-the-world-produce/815113/3 "2018-05-30T06:27:47Z")

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Produce, or consume? [Different numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Energy_supply,_consumption_and_electricity). But if “produce”, about somewhere between 5-6 x 10[sup]20[/sup]J, the “latest” figures are a couple years out of date.

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**Author:** ![cjackson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a3d4f5/32.png) [@cjackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjackson)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2018, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-energy-does-the-world-produce/815113/4 "2018-05-30T07:34:10Z")

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Let’s say both produce and consume, and how it compares to the energy of natural disasters.

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**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2018, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-energy-does-the-world-produce/815113/5 "2018-05-30T09:28:17Z")

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Hurricanes are on the order of 100s of trillions of watts (J/s) each, and last for around a day or a bit more - so, in the scores of Exajoules (EJ - quintillions or 10[sup]18[/sup] of Joules) - let’s say 50 EJ total for an _average_ one.

Really big earthquakes are around several EJ (in 1 minute or so).

Really big volcanic eruptions are also in the Exajoule range - the biggest we know of was 1,050 EJ but for an idea of scale, Mt St Helens was 0.1 EJ but was very quick, something like the current Kilauea eruption is more like the latter than the former, but with long-term energy output. A rough average of 60 volcanoes erupt each year.

So these are a couple of orders of magnitude less than the total energy production figure given above (except for that supervolcano), but there are many hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons, earthquakes and volcanoes, and that’s not counting other storms, monsoons and the like. I think as a rough guess, total terrestrial disaster energy is probably a a couple orders of magnitude greater than human power output

If you want to add solar flares into it, that becomes a certainty - an _average_ flare is 10[sup]20[/sup]J, a _big_ one 10[sup]25[/sup]J :eek: