A petajoule (PJ) is a massive metric unit of energy equal to one quadrillion (10^15) joules. It is the standard scale used by economists and policymakers to measure national energy consumption, fossil fuel reserves, and grid-scale power generation. For context, a single petajoule holds the equivalent energy of roughly 34,000 tonnes of coal or 278 gigawatt-hours of electricity.
Heard on the job
The facility's total annual energy consumption dropped from 1.2 to 0.9 petajoules after the steam plant upgrades.
Insider tip
Energy analysts often convert petajoules to terawatt-hours (TWh) when discussing electrical grids, with 1 PJ equaling exactly 0.277778 TWh.
Also heard as
- PJ