The United States consumes a lot of electricity, in fact in consumes 3.892 trillion kWh, and about 41% of it comes from coal. Meaning that coal is responsible for the production of 1.60 trillion kWh. The thermal energy in one ton of coal is 6,150 kWh, but unfortunately the efficiency of a coal plant is not 100%. In fact it is only around 40%, so one ton of coal can really produce 2,460 kWh. This means that it takes 65.04 billon tons of coal. Coal produces 2.095 pounds of carbon dioxide per kWh. So the American coal plants produce about 3.352 trillion pounds of carbon dioxide. So the average per American is 10,956.4 pounds per year.