Energy Efficiency - "The New Era"

History shows that every technical application from its beginnings presents certain unforeseeable secondary effects which are more disastrous than the lack of the technique would have been.— Jacques Ellul

America fails to capture some two-thirds of the power it generates, much of it through simple waste, according to federal data.

Even Canadian government reports unwittingly acknowledge the starkness of the problem while calling for more efficiency. A 2013 study on energy trends, for example, lamented that “Canada was producing economic values more efficiently” but each household was using “a greater number of energy‐consuming goods and services per capita than in 1990.”

Energy efficiency is one of the most powerful resources we have for meeting our energy and environmental goals. It is also an enormous economic opportunity.

Setting aside the significant environmental impact, this energy waste costs American businesses and households billions of dollars every year. In commercial buildings alone, where annual electricity costs are roughly $190 billion, about 30 percent of this energy goes to waste.

The Challenges Ahead are:
1- The magnitude of energy efficiency savings must be increasing dramatically;
2- The sources of energy efficiency savings must diversify;
3- Measuring and ensuring the persistence of energy efficiency savings must become commonplace;
4- Energy efficiency outcomes must be integrated with a carbon reduction framework, and
5-Energy efficiency must be understood and valued as part of an evolving grid, with utility-scale renewables, distributed energy resources (DERs), and significant load variability.

Energy conservation involves both reducing what we use and using it more efficiently. The terms energy efficiency implies that the activity or task can be accomplished using less energy, while energy conservation implies that there is less need for a particular activity in the first place. In other words, conserving energy means less activity thereby reducing consumption.

Both energy efficiency and energy conservation have an economic benefit because they lower energy costs by reducing demand, as well as reducing the environmental impact of harmful emissions. The issue here, of course, is not that we use or waste energy in our daily lives, it's about the type of energy we consume and the effects it has on other aspects of our lives, for example, our environment, our health and our general standard of comfort and living.

Sources:
Why Is America Wasting So Much Energy? - Article By Terry Sobolewski and Ralph Cavanagh Nov. 7, 2017
The Next Level of Energy Efficiency. Article By Dian M.Grueneich
August 2015.
The Curse of Energy Efficiency. Article By Andrew Nikiforuk Feb 2018.

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