Energy services are fundamental determinants of the quality of life as well as the economic vitality of both industrialized and developing nations. Few analytic tools exist, however, to explore changes in individual, household, and national levels of energy consumption and utilization. In order to contribute to such analyses, we extend the application of Lorenz curves to energy consumption. We examined the distribution of residential electricity consumption in five countries: Norway, USA, El Salvador, Thailand, and Kenya. These countries exhibit a dramatic range of energy profiles, with electricity consumption far more evenly distributed across the population in some industrialized nations than others, and with further significant differences in the Lorenz distribution between industrialized and industrializing economies. The metric also provides critical insights into the temporal evolution of energy management in different states and nations. We illustrate this with a preliminary longitudinal study of commercial and industrial electricity use in California during the economically volatile 1990s. Finally, we explore the limits of Lorenz analyses for understanding energy equity through a discussion of the roles that variations in energy conversion efficiency and climate play in shaping distributions of energy consumption. The Lorenz method, which is widely employed by economists to analyze income distribution, is largely unused in energy analysis, but provides a powerful new tool for estimating the distributional dimensions of energy consumption. Its widespread use can make significant contributions to scientific and policy debates about energy equity in the context of climate change mitigation, electric power industry deregulation and restructuring, and the development of national infrastructure. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.