Electricity Use per Person by Country — Every Decade Since 1800

Electricity use per person tracks the annual kilowatt-hours consumed by an individual, illuminating the vast energy divide between powering basic human survival and fueling modern, automated lifestyles across the world. This metric measures the unseen current running through daily existence, shaping everything from heating and refrigeration to heavy industry and digital connection. As of the 2020s, electricity use per person ranges from 50,613 kWh/year in Iceland to 15.14 kWh/year in Chad across 142 countries, defining the boundary between abundance and scarcity.

The table and chart below track every country MYRIAD covers, decade by decade, starting from an era before modern grids illuminated the globe and extending to the present day. This trajectory reveals a world shifting from darkness toward an unevenly distributed light. In the modern hierarchy of consumption, nations like Norway at 23,816 and the United States at 12,662 sit near the top, while Panama marks the exact median at 2,463 kWh/year, reflecting a global transition of varying speeds.

To be born into this landscape is to inherit a specific capacity for existence. For some, life is defined by the high tiers of the ranking; for others, it is the reality of the bottom, where Benin records 107.92 and Chad 15.14. Every single row in this dataset links directly to what that specific number meant for a real life born there. Where do you rank among everyone ever born?

Explore the data to compute your own parallel lives on MYRIAD.