Conservation and Efficiency

Ener­gy-effi­cient LED bulb from C‑Crane

Con­ser­va­tion and Effi­cien­cy have a large poten­tial to reduce our elec­tric­i­ty needs. Gov­ern­ment, indus­try and inde­pen­dent analy­ses have shown that cost-effec­tive ener­gy effi­cien­cy improve­ments could reduce elec­tric­i­ty use by 27% to 75% of total nation­al use with­in 10–20 years — with­out impact­ing qual­i­ty of life or man­u­fac­tur­ing out­put. Cut­ting our ener­gy use by 50% would make us as ener­gy effi­cient at Japan and Europe already are. The pro­jec­tions that have been made for max­i­mum tech­ni­cal poten­tial of effi­cien­cy sav­ings are as follows:

Author	Pro­ject­ed Reduc­tion	Quotes / Source(s)
U.S. Con­gress’ Office of Tech­nol­o­gy Assessment	33% (in 12 years)	OTA’s own analy­sis con­clud­ed that cost effec­tive, ener­gy-effi­cien­cy mea­sures could yield sav­ings of one-third in total ener­gy use in the res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial sec­tors by 2015 over a busi­ness as usu­al sce­nario. In fact total ener­gy use in these sec­tors would decline some­what under an aggres­sive effi­cien­cy strat­e­gy. These two sec­tors com­bined are often dubbed “the build­ings sec­tor” because ener­gy use for build­ing sys­tems (space heat­ing and con­di­tion­ing, ven­ti­la­tion, light­ing, and water heat­ing) has made up the over­whelm­ing bulk of ener­gy con­sump­tion in these two sec­tors. Report­ed ener­gy use for the build­ings sec­tor includes build­ing sys­tems, appli­ances, office sys­tems, and oth­er elec­tri­cal equipment. U.S. Con­gress, Office of Tech­nol­o­gy Assess­ment, Build­ing Ener­gy Effi­cien­cy, OTA-E-518 (Wash­ing­ton, DC: U.S. Gov­ern­ment Print­ing Office, May 1992), p. 3. The above is quot­ed from “Ener­gy Effi­cien­cy: Chal­lenges and Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Elec­tric Util­i­ties,” U.S. Con­gress, Office of Tech­nol­o­gy Assess­ment, Sep­tem­ber 1993, OTA-E-561, p62 (foot­note #2)
Elec­tric Pow­er Research Insti­tute (the elec­tric pow­er indus­try’s think tank)	27% to 44% (in 10 years)	“The Elec­tric Pow­er Research Insti­tute (EPRI) has esti­mat­ed that if the exist­ing stock of equip­ment and appli­ances were replaced with the most effi­cient com­mer­cial­ly avail­able tech­nolo­gies, pro­ject­ed U.S. elec­tric­i­ty use in the year 2000 could be cut by 27 to 44 per­cent with­out any diminu­tion of services.” Barakat & Cham­ber­lin, Inc., “Effi­cient Elec­tric­i­ty Use: Esti­mates of Max­i­mum Ener­gy Sav­ings,” EPRI CU-6746 (PaloAl­to, CA: The Elec­tric Pow­er Research Insti­tute, March 1990). The above is quot­ed in the OTA report, p63.
Rocky Moun­tain Institute	75% (in 20 years)	Arnold P. Fick­ett, Clark W. Gellings, and Amory B. Lovins, “Effi­cient Use of Elec­tric­i­ty,” Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, Sep­tem­ber 1990, pp. 65–74. “The Negawatt Rev­o­lu­tion,” Keynote Address by Amory Lovins at the Green Ener­gy Con­fer­ence, Mon­tre­al 1989.

Rocky Moun­tain Insti­tute’s 1989 pro­jec­tion showed that their pro­ject­ed 75% elec­tric­i­ty sav­ings could be acheived at an aver­age cost of under one cent per kilo­watt hour (buy­ing elec­tric­i­ty usu­al­ly costs over 5 cents per kWh). 

The aver­age annu­al growth in elec­tric­i­ty sales in the U.S. since 1980 is 2.3% accord­ing to the Depart­ment of Ener­gy. The chart below assumes a 45% increase over 20 years, which is what was pro­ject­ed by the May 2001 Bush-Cheney Ener­gy Plan (page x). This would amount to an aver­age 1.9% increase in elec­tric­i­ty demand over 20 years.

We need to max­i­mize con­ser­va­tion and effi­cien­cy tac­tics so that this increase stops and over­all demand decreas­es over time.

While the poten­tial for demand reduc­tion seems to dif­fer great­ly in the stud­ies cit­ed above, the Office of Tech­nol­o­gy Assess­men­t’s 33% and Rocky Moun­tain Insti­tute’s 75% fig­ures fall with­in the same trend­line range that the Elec­tric Pow­er Research Insti­tute says is pos­si­ble. This is because RMI’s fig­ure is over a longer time peri­od. See below:

OTA = U.S. Con­gress Office of Tech­nol­o­gy Assess­ment (1993 report)
EPRI = Elec­tric Pow­er Research Insti­tute (1990 report)
RMI = Rocky Moun­tain Insti­tute (1990 report)

Rocky Mountain Institute chart on how to reduce electric use by 3/4ths in 20 years:

For more info:

• Alliance to Save Energy
  
• Amer­i­can Coun­cil for an Ener­gy-Effi­cient Economy
  
• Rocky Moun­tain Institute
  
• Penn State Green Des­tiny Coun­cil Reports (includes reports on major ren­o­va­tions to a col­lege biol­o­gy build­ing which saves lots of ener­gy and money)