Efficient Use of Energy

The term efficient use of energy includes all the technical and economical measures aimed at reducing the specific energy demand of a production system or economic sector. Although implementation of energy-saving techniques may require initial investments, short-term financial returns can often be achieved through lower fuel costs due to the reduced energy demand. Improving the use of energy is a issue in virtually all sectors of an economy, but the focus here is on the power sector and the industrial sector, which have the highest primary energy demand and thus the highest potential for energy savings. Energy is vital to economic development in developing countries. Poverty will not be reduced without greater use of modern forms of energy. Assuming that energy demand in developing countries grows by 2.6% per year (a likely figure , given current trends; see World Energy Council 1995), their total consumption of energy will be double the level of total consumption in industrial countries by 2050. Even then, each person in the developing countries will be using, on average, a mere quarter of the energy consumed by each inhabitant of the industrial world. As they seek to improve their standards of living, developing countries have the opportunity to do things differently from what has happened in the past. The challenge is to break the link between Efficient use of energy is one of the main strategic measures not only for the conservation of fossil energy resources but also for abatement of air pollution and the slowing down of anthro-pogenic climate change. Accordingly, economic and technical measures to reduce specific energy demand should be priorities across all sectors of an economy. Many opportunities exist for improving efficiency, but progress has been disappointingly slow in many cases. This chapter identifies some of the key areas where improvements are possible and describes the World Bank Group's support for energy efficiency, drawing heavily on the recent strategy paper " Fuel for Thought. " economic growth and energy consumption by pursuing efficient production processes and reducing waste and, at the same time, to break the link between energy consumption and pollution by relying more on renewables and by using fossil fuels more efficiently. According to World Energy Council projections , fossil fuels will still account for almost two thirds of primary energy even decades from now. Some long-term scenarios (for example, by Shell International and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, …