Energy End-Use Efficiency

Increasing energy end-use efficiency—technologically providing more desired service per unit of delivered energy consumed—is generally the largest, least expensive, most benign, most quickly deployable, least visible, least understood, and most neglected way to provide energy services. The 46% drop in U.S. energy intensity (primary energy consumption per dollar of real GDP) during 1975–2005 represented by 2005 an effective energy " source " 2.1 as big as U.S. oil consumption, 3.4 net oil imports, 6 domestic oil output or net oil imports from OPEC countries, and 13 net imports from Persian Gulf countries. U.S. energy intensity has lately fallen by ~2.5% per year, apparently due much more to improved efficiency than to changes in behavior or in the mix of goods and services provided, and outpacing the growth of any fossil or nuclear source. Yet energy efficiency has gained little attention or respect. Indeed, since official statistics focus ~99% on physical energy supply, only the fifth of the 1996–2005 increase in U.S. energy services that came from supply was visible to investors and policymakers; the four-fifths saved was not. The last time this incomplete picture led to strongly supply-boosting national policies, in the early 1980s, it caused a trainwreck within a few years—glutted markets, crashed prices, bankrupt suppliers—because the market had meanwhile invisibly produced a gusher of efficiency. Savings were deployed faster than the big, slow, lumpy supply expansions, whose forecast revenues disappeared. Today we have two fast competitors: efficiency and micropower. Physical scientists find that despite energy efficiency's leading role in providing new energy services today, it has barely begun to tap its profitable potential. In contrast, many engineers tend to be limited by adherence to past practice, and most economists by their assumption that any profitable savings must already have occurred. The potential of energy efficiency is also increasing faster through innovative designs, technologies, policies, and marketing methods than it is being used up through gradual implementation. The uncaptured " efficiency resource " is becoming bigger and cheaper even faster than oil reserves have lately done through stunning advances in exploration and production. The expansion of the " efficiency resource " is also accelerating , as designers realize that whole-system design integration (Part 4) can often make very large (one-or two-order-of-magnitude) energy savings cost less than small or no savings, and as energy-saving technologies evolve discontinuously rather than incrementally. Moreover, simi