Thanksgiving is approaching! 95% of Americans celebrate the Thanksgiving weekend with family on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
About 50.9 million people in the U.S. will travel 50 miles or more:
- 45.5 million by car
- 3.95 million by plane
- 1.48 million by alternate modes
That’s a lot of fuel needed to get people to their destinations!
To get the holiday started, families head to the supermarket. Natural gas keeps the food fresh and the store running.
On Thanksgiving day, 46 million turkey-based Thanksgiving meals are consumed every year. This means we use about 644 million kwh of energy to cook Thanksgiving dinner which is enough energy to power a laptop for about 600 days!
Not only does the turkey take energy to cook – about 8 kwh (which could keep a fridge-freezer running for 24 hours) – but energy is used for other Thanksgiving staples like:
- Mashed Potatoes – about 1 kwh of energy used (which could brew 13 pots of coffee)
- Baked Pies – about 2 kwh of energy used (which could power an LED lamp for about 12 days)
When you can’t eat another bite, remember that energy is also used at home for other Thanksgiving activities such as:
- Watching football on a TV, which is powered in part by natural gas
- Sitting by the gas-powered fireplace
- Playing board games made from petroleum
…and we can’t forget about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade which attracts approximately 50 million viewers and 3.5 million attendees.
The parade wouldn’t be a success without the balloons and floats which are petroleum-based.
From travel to turkey to festive family traditions, we wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Original post content provided by Powering California, California Resources Corporation and LookBeyond.org.
