About 5.8 percent of residential electricty use goes towards the clothes dryer, according to DOE EIA statistics from 2001. See End-Use Consumption of Electricity 2001.  If all Americans would use the clothesline or wooden drying racks, the savings would be enough to close several power plants.

Michael Bluejay has a great tool for calculating how much energy you use drying your clothes in a machine. We also provide a fairly sophisticated calculator, which you can save to your computer as an Excel file. See How Much Energy Can You Save by Greening Your Laundry Practices?

It typically costs 30 to 40 cents to dry a load of laundry in an electric dryer and approximately 15 to 20 cents in a gas dryer. Over its expected lifetime of 18 years, the average clothes dryer will cost you approximately $1,530 to operate. Learn more at Flex Your Power.

The 5.8% of residential electricity use number is way off as a measure of energy used by drying clothes in an appliance. It does not take into account the millions of Americans who do their wash at commercial Laundromats and multi-family housing locations.

Furthermore, sixteen percent of American households use gas dryers. EIA does not keep statistics on the energy used by these machines, nor do they track--or have a way to track--energy used by laundry facilities at commercial establishments. Millions of Americans wash or have their clothes washed at commercial sector locations--universities, prisons, nursing homes, hospitals, restaurants, fish piers, and hotels, for example.Why do we pay for prisoners to have their laundry washed for them?

Finally, it is important to remember, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." The percentage of electricty used to dry is likely much higher in the median American household than in the mean or average household, because most people do not heat their homes and hot water with electricity and the average is skewed by those who use large amounts of energy in the home for peculiar uses, much more than by the Amish.