The Problem:

Resources: United States areas:

If each person in the US had access to an equal share of the area of the country how much area would that be? This is "your" share of the country for calculations in the rest of this skills assessment. In our discussions we found that we could meet all of our current energy needs with 10% of our share making energy from the wind and 5% making energy from the sun. What is 15% of your 'share' of the country?

What percent of the total area of the contiguous 48 states is within the state of Oregon? Round to the nearest whole percent.

If we need to cover 15% of the country with solar panels and wind turbines how many Oregon's will that represent? Does it seem to you that there is enough area in the right parts of the country for this to work in principle?

For the rest of this final exercise we will assume that the total average energy use of an American is 250 kWh/p-d.