Energy efficiency is the most important climate solution for several reasons:
- It is by far the biggest resource.
- It is by far the cheapest, far cheaper than the current cost of unsustainable energy, so cheap that it helps pay for the other solutions.
- It is by far the fastest to deploy.
- It is "renewable" -- the efficiency potential never runs out.
This post focuses on number one -- the tremendous size of the resource.
Of the 14 or so wedges we need to deploy globally by 2050, I have argued that about two are electricity efficiency, one is recycled energy (cogeneration), and one is vehicle fuel efficiency (cars globally averaging 60 mpg). The International Energy Agency also thinks about four wedges are efficiency. And so does Price Waterhouse Coopers.
(I would also add that since plug-in hybrids are another core solution -- and since the electric motor is inherently more efficient than the gasoline engine -- you could also consider part of the plug-in wedge to be an efficiency gain.)
I have already written about recycled energy and high-efficiency plug-in hybrids, so what I will focus on over the next several days is end-use electricity efficiency.
How big is the efficiency potential in this country? The global consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that nearly 40 percent of the U.S. emissions reduction potential by 2030 is from energy efficiency.
In the past three decades, electricity per capita has stayed flat in Californian while it has risen 60 percent in the rest of the country. If all Americans had the same per capita electricity demand as Californians, we would cut electricity consumption 40 percent. And if all of America adopted the same energy efficiency policies that California is now putting in place, the country would never have to build another power plant.
Energy efficiency is the core climate solution.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets
Making buildings more efficient: looking beyond price
Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 11:06 am
24 Jul 2008
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/energy-myths1 ...
A state's energy efficiency ranking depends on a number of additional factors. Climate is among the most important. For example, Hawaii's moderate climate leads to less need for heating and air conditioning, so among all 50 states, its energy per capita is the lowest; Alaska's extreme cold climate places helps explain why it has the highest energy use per capita. Hot-climate states with high air conditioning loads use a lot of energy.
I'm not sure if this helps your argument or not. I suppose that you would say "yes, but global warming will make all states like Texas". However, I have said multiple times in the past the global warming will make most states like California. Warmer in the summer, milder in the winter.
Therefore, Global Warming is the best answer to energy efficiency.
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Jonas Posted 11:40 am
24 Jul 2008
According to the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), efficiency and conservation could actually worsen climate change.
Not long ago, UKERC unveiled a report on how 'Rebound Effects' can result in energy savings falling short of expectations, thereby threatening the success of climate policies.
UKERC's "The Rebound Effect: an assessment of the evidence for economy-wide energy savings from improved energy efficiency", is the most thorough and in-depth review of rebound effects ever undertaken, reviewing over 500 papers and reports. It analyses the nature, operation and importance of rebound effects and provides a comprehensive review of the available evidence on this topic, together with closely related issues, such as the link between energy consumption and economic growth.
It recommends building 'headroom' into policy targets to allow for rebound effects, raising energy prices in line with energy efficiency improvements or imposing absolute caps on emissions.
An example of a rebound effect would be the driver who replaces a car with a fuel-efficient model, only to take advantage of its cheaper running costs to drive further and more often. Or a family that insulates their loft and puts the money saved on their heating bill towards an overseas holiday. In economists' and peak oil circles, rebound effects are sometimes referred to as the 'Jevons Paradox', first formulated in the 19th century in the context of coal consumption.
Report:
Rebound effects have been neglected by both experts and policymakers - for example, they do not feature in the recent Stern and IPCC reports or in the Government's Energy White Paper.
This is a mistake. If we do not make sufficient allowance for rebound effects, we will overestimate the contribution that energy efficiency can make to reducing carbon emissions. This is especially important given that the Climate Change Bill proposes legally binding commitments to meet carbon emissions reduction targets. We need to get the sums right. - Steve Sorrell, chief author, Senior Fellow at UKERC
The difficulty of developing policy to take rebound effects into account is exacerbated by disagreement over the significance of rebound effects. Some believe that they are insignificant, while others argue that energy efficiency measures lead to increased energy consumption - an outcome that has been termed 'backfire'.
UKERC: The Rebound Effect: an assessment of the evidence for economy-wide energy savings from improved energy efficiency - October 2007
UKERC: The Rebound Effect: presentation - November 1, 2007.
UKERC: 'Rebound Effects' Threaten Success of UK Climate Policy - November 1, 2007.
I'm not sure what to think of this. But if these people are right, then energy efficiency would be a problematic option and perhaps not a core solution at all.
As long as we don't change our mentalities and minds, and as long as we remain consumers ever desiring more stuff or status, then all these suggested "core" solutions remain largely futile.
My core solution is reducing meat consumption. Pimentel just published a great paper showing the huge carbon savings from this operation alone:
Pimentel D, Williamson S, Alexander C E, Gonzelez-Pagan O, Kontak C and Mulkey SE (2008). Reducing energy inputs in the US food system. Human Ecology: DOI 10.1007/s10745-008-9184-3.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/s-wel07230 ...
But this too requires a change in habits and consumption patterns.
Energy efficiency is not a low hanging fruit. That would be a way too simplistic view, showing a total lack of insight into economics and human nature.
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Gar Lipow Posted 12:20 pm
24 Jul 2008
For household heating, household cooling and personal automotive transport in
developed countries, the direct rebound effect is likely to be less than 30% and may
be closer to 10% for transport. Direct rebound effects for these energy services are
likely to decline in the future as demand saturates. Improvements in energy efficiency
should therefore achieve 70% or more of the reduction in energy consumption
projected using engineering principles. However, indirect effects mean that the
economy-wide reduction in energy consumption will be less.
<...>
For household heating, household cooling and personal automotive transport in
developed countries, the direct rebound effect is likely to be less than 30% and may
be closer to 10% for transport. Direct rebound effects for these energy services are
likely to decline in the future as demand saturates. Improvements in energy efficiency
should therefore achieve 70% or more of the reduction in energy consumption
projected using engineering principles. However, indirect effects mean that the
economy-wide reduction in energy consumption will be less.
The rebound effect is not news, and one reason we need to combine multiple approaches to emissions reduction - public investment, regulation, and emissions pricing. But in the energy field it is something that reduces results; it does not reverse them and cause efficiency improvements to increase consumption. The case of the steam engine is not comparable to fossil fuel use today. A better comparison is solar energy. The operating costs to produce solar electricity are cheap but the capital costs are extremely high. If someone could get five times as much work out of a solar cell without increasing the capital costs to produce it (including any concentrator costs if concentrating PV was the means used) then increasing the efficiency with which a solar cell used sunlight would also increase the use solar energy. If we could make a coal plant twice as efficient we probably we NOT double the consumption of coal, though this would not cut coal use in half either.
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Jonas Posted 12:39 pm
24 Jul 2008
While rebound effects vary widely in size, in some cases they may be sufficiently large to lead to an overall increase [emphasis in the original text] in energy consumption - an outcome that has been termed `backfire'. There is some evidence to suggest that improvements in the energy efficiency of certain `pervasive' technologies such as steam engines and electric motors have contributed to backfire in the past.
What makes you say that a switch from, for example, the ICE in transport, to battery-electric vehicles will not be a 'pervasive' technology that will backfire?
And the comparison with solar energy and the comment about capital costs would need to take into account this statement from the report:
Improvements in energy efficiency are often associated with improvements in the productivity of capital, labour and materials. More efficient use of these other inputs will tend to amplify the rebound effect.
Finally, let's not forget that we're living in a globalised world. The division between developed and developing countries is a bit arbitrary. Energy efficiency breakthroughs will rapidly be taken up in the developing world, where rebound effects and even 'backfiring' can be much stronger than in highly developed countries.
In fact, there's even a formalised system in place that allows fat, opulent, inefficient industries from Europe to invest in efficiency increases in developing countries. This system is called the Clean Development Mechanism. And there are definitely signs of backfiring there, because most of these CDM projects are taking place in countries where the drive to consume ever more is very, very, very big (China, India).
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:17 pm
24 Jul 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 2:17 pm
24 Jul 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jonas Posted 5:54 pm
24 Jul 2008
As said before, you have to look at the world as an interconnected, global place. That's why the report looks at 'economy-wide' effects.
Efficiency increases are rapidly transferred to economies in which they can backfire.
I suspect the backfiring effect could be larger than the one the world witnessed after the introduction of the steam engine.
We'll see.
Of course, like Amazingdrx suggests, the backfiring can be a good thing if all these cars are powered by carbon-negative bioenergy. That way, the more you use of it, the more CO2 you remove from the atmosphere... ;-)
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:16 am
25 Jul 2008
It looks from the graph that the biggest difference among states is from industry. This suggests that much of the "low-hanging fruit" in efficiency might occur in industry, not residences -- and it looks like transportation is number two.
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vakibs Posted 2:23 am
25 Jul 2008
There is an important limit to bio-energies, which is the amount of land available to us. Due to their extremely low energy density, we cannot hope to live a future of bio-energy (without sacrificing crucial issues such as biodiversity).
I think we could make use of a little bio-energy (wood, cellulosic, sea-algae, whatever) but this is not going to cater to all our transport needs by any means.
This has to be supplemented by other sources of energy, each one of which has crucial drawbacks and limitations.
What is needed the most is an important change in the attitude of people. Wasting energy is a crime, people should use energy more preciously.
Electric engine is more efficient than the internal combustion engine. It just makes sense to shift there, whether Jevon's paradox or not.
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perk Posted 12:53 pm
25 Jul 2008
"How can we change our sleep times and life habits to reduce the need for lighting?" rather than "How do we improve these Mercury-laden compact florescent bulbs?"
Yes, conservation hurts. Get over it.
While we bath our brains in the soma of false hopes of a technological solution, we continue to drive our butts to bike races, kids to private schools and jobs so that we can afford Viking ranges and granite counter-tops and bigger hot tubs. Well, we are sealing our fate. CONSERVE!
We may have to take a step backwards in time to the 1800's where the average family probably used 100 kilowatt hours a year of fossil fuels. Hey, we will all be better for it.
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timbuktu Posted 9:40 am
26 Jul 2008
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Pangolin Posted 3:51 pm
26 Jul 2008
Our houses use much more fossil fuel energy than our cars and the average house is may as well have a hole in the roof in the winter and is effectively a heat/humidity trap in the summer. Repairing these problems one house at a time is far more expensive than applying dedicated crews to re-engineering and repairing blocks of houses at a time.
If nothing else the simple ability to keep a drill rig for geo-exchange HVAC on one site rather than jumping it around would save thousands of dollars per unit.
I'm not sure where the negatives of this kind of conversion would be as people aren't going to heat or cool houses past the comfort point if they can avoid it.
Put the Carbon Back
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:36 pm
26 Jul 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 1:01 am
27 Jul 2008
It just makes sense, hehey.
Wind, solar, wave, and biogas energy from the waste stream actually increase GHG!
This is starting to sound like a high school debating team practice.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Shailesh Posted 5:04 am
27 Jul 2008
I would appreciate if somebody could throw a light on how we are planning to take care of those costs. Because this is one of the factors that will affect the success of electrical energy efficiency programs in future.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:22 am
27 Jul 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 5:31 am
27 Jul 2008
A 100,000 population smart grid city project! Excel is way out in front.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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timbuktu Posted 7:01 am
27 Jul 2008
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Jon Rynn Posted 9:35 am
27 Jul 2008
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Millstone Posted 1:39 am
28 Jul 2008
New York, California and Hawaii have among the highest average retail prices for electricity in the country. Prices are high in these places for a variety of reasons but they all have the obvious effect of reducing usage.
Furthermore how well does this fact wash with the whole "this isn't going to cost us anything" message I keep seeing getting tossed around.
I have different opinions on how we should reach our goals than many on this site, but I truly would hate to see people get on board thinking they won't feel any extra pain in the pocket book or quality of life, only to find out it isn't all wine and roses. And for many Americans, and perhaps the majority of the readers of this website, there might not be apprciable effects in either category but I think if we are all honest with ourselves we know that there a lot of folks out there for whom a rise in their electricity price to the level of CA, NY or HI would be hard to cope with.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:51 am
28 Jul 2008
For what it's worth (hint: it IS free). Hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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