U.S. Christmas Lights Use More Energy Than Some Countries

It's all about the lights during the holidays and Christmas lights is one of the most favored traditions in American households. Just over the past Christmas, it was announced that the Christmas lights from American households over the season utilized more electricity than some less fortunate countries do within a year, for example Ethiopia and El Salvador.

Colorful and luminous light that hung from American rooftops, lawns and trees accounted for about 6.63 billion kilowatt hours of electricity consumption each year, according to a news release (and a blog post by the Center for Global Development).

This amount of electricity consumption is more than the national electricity consumption of most developing countries across the globe, according to the researchers. For example, Ethiopia consumes 5.30 billion kilowatt hours, while El Salvador uses 5.35 billion and Tanzania uses 4.81 billion.

The researchers was carried by Todd Moss and Priscilla Agyapong, who used data from a 2008 US Department of Energy report and the World Bank to carry out their study and to establish their findings.

In addition, the researchers claimed that the 6.63 billion kilowatt hours that was used by U.S. Christmas lights represents just 0.2 percent of the US annual energy consumption, which is equivalent to power 14 million refrigerators. 

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