Mid-August 2009 poll results
A Washington Post – ABC News poll from mid August included questions on how the President is handling energy policy. The results showed very strong support for energy efficiency as a way to fight climate change. The accompanying published article, however did not mention efficiency and instead talked about solar, wind, nuclear (including the NIMBY issue) and transportation.
Looking into the tabulated answers, the poll results show that efficiency has strong support that appears to be non-partisan. Question 24, parts f and g ask if business and industry should do more energy conservation, and the result is overwhelmingly ‘yes’. Specifically 79% strongly support encouraging more energy efficiency, where only 4% strongly discourage this step. When asked if business and industry should be required to do more, strong support drops to 62%, with 12% strongly opposing; but this is still a very positive indicator for something that (as the question asked) would be required, one might say imposed, on US business.
Other questions in this area that also receive strong support are ‘develop more solar and wind power’ (79%); ‘require car manufacturers to improve fuel efficiency’ (74%), and ‘develop electric car technology’ (67%); so all of these options can be seen as generally positive, less controversial, and more likely to be embraced by the public.
On the other hand, ‘build more nuclear power plants’ appears to be a polarizing issue, with 36% giving strong support, and 30% offering strong opposition. Other options with about equal opposing views include all of the fossil-based solutions such as more coal mining, more oil drilling, and building more plants that burn fossil fuel to generate electricity.
The role of energy efficiency
Of all options, reducing electricity use is the lowest cost resource available to significantly impact greenhouse gas emissions because every time electricity is not used (that otherwise would have been), less fuel is burned in powerplants. Nearly 50% of US electricity comes from coal-fired powerplants. Even from the most efficient coal plants, about two pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) are released for every kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity produced, so two pounds are avoided for every kWh of electricity that is saved. It is not hard to think about applying today’s efficient technology to achieve billions of kWh savings and millions of metric tons of CO2 reduction annually from energy efficiency, but it is very hard to imagine the cost and scale of solar, wind, electric cars, or “cash for clunkers” that would be required to reduce CO2 emissions on the scale that would put a dent in the rate of US greenhouse gas emissions.
Technologies exist today in the form of more efficient lights and better control systems to be sure that electricity consumption does not happen when it is not needed. Other measures available today are better air conditioners, motors with higher efficiencies, insulation, better windows, fixing building “envelope” leaks, and other steps to stop unnecessary waste. Today’s efficient products give more comfort for higher productivity, better lighting, and safer work environments simply because new technology is better at converting electricity to a useful purpose.
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Amory Lovins (www.rmi.org) has been preaching efficiency as a major part of the solution for years now. About time we all noticed! Per dollar spent, it’s the single cheapest “clean” energy solution out there!
Energy Efficiency as a Solution for Climate Change and global warming sounds very refreshing!
This is good news as the International Energy Agency believes energy efficiency measures can account for half the needed carbon dioxide emissions, far behind renewables, carbon capture and storage and nuclear power.