Making homes, vehicles, and businesses more energy efficient is seen as a largely untapped solution to addressing global warming, energy security, and fossil fuel depletion.

Many of these ideas have been discussed for years, since the 1973 oil crisis brought energy issues to the forefront.  In the late 1970s, physicist Amory Lovins popularised the notion of a "soft energy path", with a strong focus on energy efficiency.  Among other things, Lovins popularised the notion of negawatts—the idea of meeting energy needs by increasing efficiency instead of increasing energy production.

Energy efficiency has proved to be a cost-effective strategy for building economies without necessarily growing energy consumption.  Still, efficiency often has taken a secondary position to new power generation and end of pipe technologies as a solution to global warming in creating national energy policies.

Why energy efficiency?

In the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the EU member states, as a bloc, committed themselves to an 8% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.

This may not seem like much.  However, given that emission trends have been pointing upwards for years, the challenge is formidable: in practice, the 8% reduction means that the EU has to reduce its emissions by 20-30% compared to a business-as-usual scenario.

The cornerstone of a sustainable society

In order to fulfil the goals of the Kyoto Protocol, an increasing share of the energy supply must come from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass. However, if energy demand keeps increasing, it will be virtually impossible to satisfy our needs with renewables alone. Energy efficiency is the cornerstone of a sustainable society

Andris Piebalgs (European Commissioner for Energy) has stated “These ‘negawatts’ (contributed by energy efficiency) have been every bit as valuable in economic terms as the ‘produced watts’ of energy they replaced.  With today’s energy prices, a negawatt of energy savings costs about half of what it costs to produce the same amount of energy.  The cheapest, most competitive, cleanest and most secure form of energy for the European Union thus remains saved energy.”

The benefits of energy efficiency extend far beyond achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing demand for energy helps reduce other environmental problems such as poor urban air quality, acid rain and eutrophication (the process by which our seas and lakes grow green from algae).

Energy efficiency also contributes to economic and social prosperity.  Energy is a costly production factor in Europe’s economies. Increased energy efficiency contributes to energy security and makes us more competitive in an increasingly globalised world.

Energy efficiency provides us with the time needed to replace fossil fuels and other non-sustainable energy sources with renewables in an ecological, economic and socially responsible manner.

A big thing in small packages

Until the 1970s, economic growth seemed to be directly linked to increased energy use. After the oil crises in the 1970s and the early 80s, this direct link was broken, as we started to apply energy efficiency fast enough to overcome the effect of economic growth.

Since the 1970s, improvements in energy efficiency have contributed more to our economic prosperity than any other single source of energy supply. But despite the fact that energy efficiency is the most powerful "energy source" we know, energy policy makers have never prioritised this for more than short periods in response to crises.

Why? Possibly because energy efficiency is invisible, unlike power plants. And the fact that large-scale energy efficiency actually requires millions of small decisions means that policy makers often have difficulties understanding what needs to be done.

Since the first oil crisis in 1973, increased energy efficiency has contributed more to our prosperity than any other single source of energy supply. If energy efficiency is given the place it deserves in energy policy, we could do even better.

Source: www.eceee.org