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John Holdren, President Obama's top science advisor and a longstanding proponent of energy efficiency. (Source: Scientific American)
John Holdren, Obama’s top science adviser, was recently interviewed by Yale 360 about the future of energy efficiency, renewable energy, climate change and energy policy. The entire interview is supremely insightful and relevant, but one passage in particular caught our attention:
The cleanest, fastest, cheapest, safest, surest energy supply option continues to be increasing the efficiency of energy end use — more efficient cars, more efficient buildings, more efficient industrial processes, more efficient airplanes. We have gotten more new energy out of energy efficiency improvements in the last 35 years than we’ve gotten out of all supply side expansion put together in the United States. That’s even without trying all that hard. For most of that period, we haven’t had anything that you could call a really coherent set of energy policies supporting increasing energy efficiency. We need… a more coherent set of policies.
We agree fully with Holdren’s call for a more “coherent set of energy policies supporting increasing energy efficiency,” but would point out that, perhaps more importantly than a lack of clear policy, what has been most lacking over the last 30 years has been individual incentive. Relatively cheap oil, combined with limited or mixed information about energy efficiency overshadowed the vague and uncertain benefits to be gained from making energy efficiency improvements.
But even so, as Holdren points out, the (largely invisible) improvements that we have made have been tremendous. The repercussions of our energy-swindling habits have become increasingly apparent (think peak oil and coal, the imminence of climate change, two concurrent wars in the Middle East). And it has become daily more obvious that the benefits of energy efficiency far outweigh the costs.
All the more so, because in addition to becoming more important; energy efficiency is becoming cheaper and easier. As a recent post on Get Energy Smart Now! points out, CFLs are now significantly more affordable than incandescent bulbs, when the cost to own is taken alongside the cost to buy. And building improvements such as insulation and air sealing leave the (significant) savings that accompany CFLs in the dust.
And that’s without getting into the environmental benefits. As a recent McKinsey report - Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy (pdf) - points out, the improvements we could feasibly achieve in energy efficiency by 2020 would be “the equivalent of taking the entire U.S. fleet of passenger vehicles and light trucks off the road.”
As people become increasingly aware of the tremendous payback that accompanies investment in energy efficiency, what we should see in the next few years is a move towards energy efficiency - with or without the clear policy guidance we anticipate - will leave the laudable improvements of the last 30 years in the dust.
