Now That's a Lot of Coal

Amazing stat of the day courtesy of Big Coal:

The average American consumes about 20 pounds of coal a day.

That is incredible!

I figure I ingest less than ten pounds of food and water a day, so as an average American I consume over twice that much in coal.

A pound of coal can be turned into roughly 1 kWh of power, so 20 lbs of coal could light a 100W lightbulb for 20 hours. All told, the US uses over 1 million tons of coal a year.