The apparently novel idea that substantial investment will give disproportionately better returns in energy saving
may be new to economists,
but various forms of resource management have long been aware of this dynamic.

For instance the cider-maker knows full well that the orchard's low hanging fruit is but chickenfeed,
when compared with the volume to be gathered by investing in a good long ladder.

Yet the idea that only energy efficiency can provide the  requisite rate of change of GHG output
is just unsupported assertion.

Furthermore, it ignores the long established dynamic of Jevon's Paradox (C19),
whereby gains in energy efficiency are instrumental in raising the number of machines sold, thus raising the actual volume of fuel burned and blithely swamping any intended emissions savings.

Moreover it ignores the very serious potential of various other options,
were they to be given the scale of implementation proposed above for EE.
For instance, giving a sufficient price for coppice reforestation to yield both charcoal for "Terra Preta" and liquid fuels for essential usage
would not only help to halt & reverse the deforestation that is around 1/5th of the GHG output problem,
it could also provide self-funding CCS for between one & two gigatonnes/yr of airborne carbon.

Most notably, carbon drawn from the atmosphere cuts the problematic concentration therein:
by contrast, neither the bi-product liquid fuels nor the much-vaunted energy efficiency options
will cut global demand for fossil fuels once that demand takes off again;
fuel left on the market will be bought and burnt by the next bidder.
Only a global treaty defining each nation's declining entitlements to emit GHGs is going to achieve that reduction.

I'm sorry that Terra Preta/Biochar has just been given a one-liner airing here on Grist, which of course was inherently out of context and thus a gift to objectors.

Given that we cannot sensibly rank the relevance of options such as EE without a broader appreciation, perhaps it is time that a leading academic proponent of the Biochar option was asked to contribute a concise account of the option's strengths, weaknesses & uncertainties ?

Regards,

Billhook

More efficiency increases payouts. What Amory Lovins refers to as "tunneling through the cost barrier".

Energy savings produce other savings as side effects. But some of those savings occur only if energy savings are big enough. For example,in the passive homes linked by (of all people) our village idiot, the huge savings in energy use eliminate the need for a furnace. That is a huge additional savings, a capital savings. Note that saving half the energy would produce half the capital savings. A furnace of half average capacity costs more than half of what an average furnace does. Eliminating 100% of the need for a furnace is a step function.

The kinds of utility energy efficiency programs found in Massachusetts are arguably among the very few measures that can achieve the scale of emission reductions we need in the short amount of time we have. Nothing else -- carbon pricing, renewable energy, carbon sequestration -- is big enough and fast enough. So it's vital that legislators and energy planners understand the unique advantages of efficiency.

I am concerned with the above paragraph of the post. Electricity efficiency is perhaps the most important thing we can do, but contrary to the implication above, it too is not "big enough". Nothing is big enough by itself. We need to pursue dozens of things, in parallel, to have a chance of solving this problem. We've got to stop thinking in terms of point solutions.

To illustrate this, consider passing a massive electricity efficiency program in 2009 that makes 2010 lower than 2009, and 2011 lower than 2010, and so on. Suppose further (unrealistically) that 100% of the reductions are applied to coal power plants, our dirtiest. Suppose we do nothing else about our other GHG emissions during those years? Unfortunately population growth eats up the gains from efficiency. A detailed spreadsheet model of this confirms this. In a scenario where we get from 12,258 kWh per capita in 2005 to 10,065 in 2015, 8,622 in 2020, and 7,444 in 2025, total GHG emissions drop by only 1.8%, 5.3%, and 7.7% respectively from 2006 levels. This is nowhere near enough, and this is a very aggressive efficiency schedule.  You don't need the spreadsheet to understand this. Coal power plants are only 27% of our US total GHG emissions. Drive them to zero, and you've only gained 27% reduction, and kWh per capita numbers such as the above doesn't drive coal to zero (in my spreadsheet it is reduced 53% in 2025). If the other 73% of GHG emissions simply grows with population (by 8% in 2015, 12% in 2020, and 17% in 2025), then eat up most of the reductions.

We absolutely have to address other emissions in parallel with electricity efficiency.  That includes 16% from gasoline transportation, 6% from diesel transportation, 3% from jet transportation, 11% from natural gas residential/commercial/industrial combustion, 10% from methane emissions, 8% from coal/petroleum used in industry, 5% from N2O, and 2% from Hydrofluorocarbons, Perfluorocarbons, and SF6. We need renewables to replace the coal that efficiency cannot eliminate, and we need renewables to power the conversion of our transportation fleet from fossil fuels to electricity. We need high speed rail to replace air travel where possible, and we need more efficient air travel. Some of these things must be started in 2009 or 2010 because they take time to scale up. One cannot do efficiency first, and renewables second; they must be done in parallel.

To illustrate the scope of the problem, California is developing a plan to reduce 2020 emissions by 174 MMT CO2. There are items on the list that are as small as 0.15 MMT because many small things can add up to big numbers. You need to think this way to succeed. Similarly, you cannot ignore jet fuel consumption just because it is only 3% of emissions; you need to look for reductions even in sub-1% items.