Reply #7: My monthly home energy usage is 1520Kwh

[gristy]

About 1/4 of that is electricity, and 3/4 of that is gas for heating a poorly-insulated 1200 sq foot home (temps in the 50's).
Assuming bright sunshine on average 6 hours/day (perhaps optimistic), solar electric panels can generate in one month a total of (12W/sq ft)*6hr/day*31day = 2.23 Kwh/sq ft. So to generate the same amount of electricity that I am now consuming, I would need 302Kwh/(2.23Kwh/sq ft) = 135 sq feet (hmm, that's not too much...). Cost of those solar panels would be about ($50/sqft)*125sqft = $6,250 (ouch). I guess that's why I keep reading about how the cost of solar panels needs to come down... But I would also need either a way to store that electricity for night and cloudy day consumption, or be able to buy and sell power from/to the power company. I would also need either a lot of solar thermal panels for home and water heating and/or more electric panels if I had big cooling needs.

But these are all power generation considerations. My first question is how much can the US reduce its energy consumption if we had the political and social will? If everyone was willing to greatly reduce their energy consumption because they knew that everyone else had to and was willing to also do so, how much could our energy consumption be reduced while still feeding and sheltering all of us? I wonder if someone has done the research to try and answer this question.

edited for clarity