GC: n

CT: The population problem isn’t just a matter of the number of people. People consume food, fresh water, wood, minerals, and energy as we go about our daily lives. And producing food, pumping groundwater, harvesting wood, mining minerals, and burning fuel all deplete our resource base and produce pollution.
One critical indicator of environmental impact is to measure our energy consumption. When you click on one of the countries in the graph below, you’ll see how that country compares to the United States in the size of its population, the amount of energy it consumes as a country, and the amount of energy consumed per person.

S: http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/population_energy (last access: 19 February 2015)

N: – energy (n): 1590s, ‘force of expression’, from Middle French énergie (16c.), from Late Latin energia, from Greek energeia ‘activity, action, operation’, from energos ‘active, working’, from en ‘at’ + ergon ‘work’, that which is wrought; business; action’. Used by Aristotle with a sense of ‘actuality, reality, existence’ (opposed to ‘potential’) but this was misunderstood in Late Latin and afterward as ‘force of expression’, as the power which calls up realistic mental pictures. Broader meaning of ‘power’ in English is first recorded 1660s. Scientific use is from 1807. Energy crisis first attested 1970.
– consumption (n): late 14c., “wasting of the body by disease; wasting disease” (replacing Old English yfeladl “the evil disease”), from Old French consumpcion, from Latin consumptionem (nominative consumptio) “a using up, wasting,” noun of state from past participle stem of consumere. Meaning “the using up of material” is 1530s.
2. The utilisation of energy for conversion to derived energy or for the production of useful energy.
3. Amount of energy consumed in a process or system, or by an organization or society.

S: 1. OED – http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=energy+consumption (last access: 5 January 2017). 2. TACIS (588) p. 177. 3. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/energy-consumption.html (last access: 19 February 2015)

SYN: power consumption

S: TERMIUM PLUS (last access: 19 February 2015)

CR: energy