More Energy Supply, or More Efficient Energy Use?

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could not avoid its rule-making authority to regulate greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change without demonstrating scientific reasons for doing so. Although the EPA established regulations last year for new power plants, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases are its existing power plants. Seven years after that landmark Supreme Court decision, in his State of the Union speech, President Obama directed the EPA to issue regulations for existing power plants by June 1, 2014.

There is considerable speculation over whether the EPA’s proposed rules will be so harsh as to require excessive cost for compliance, or alternatively so weak as to be effectively toothless. Stringent regulations may indeed force inefficient plants to close or be faced with higher compliance costs. Industry critics will likely complain that with the resulting plant closures, we risk losing energy suppliers that our growing world economy needs.

But do we really need these dirty energy suppliers? The largest “source” of energy over the last 40 years hasn’t been any fossil fuel or even any renewable supplier. Not coal, nor oil or natural gas, nor hydro or nuclear, nor wind, solar or geothermal. It’s been energy conservation, through more efficient use of energy supplies. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) put it well: “The cheapest, best ‘source’ of energy is needing less of it in the first place by converting, delivering, and using it more efficiently.”

And making our current uses of energy more efficient costs less than producing new power. That is the conclusion of this study by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE), which makes a direct, side-by-side comparison of the costs and benefits of producing new sources of energy (via fossil fuels or alternatives), versus making the supplies we already have more efficient.* The study considers the various costs of becoming more efficient, such as the expense of insulating buildings, research costs to develop better transportation options, and actions utilities must take to improve efficiency in power generation.

Certainly we can obtain some of the energy that we need from conservation and efficiency, but how much? Five percent? Fifty percent? Can our society take enough of these actions collectively—from turning off a light when leaving a room to better insulating buildings to getting more miles out of every gallon of gas—that we could meet our energy needs through conservation and efficiency alone? Do we have the political will to mount an Apollo or Manhattan project, marshaling all possible resources toward eliminating fossil fuels entirely?

In the short term, the answer is no. Our fossil fuel addiction is too deep to be shed overnight. But if conservation and efficiency are the long-term answers, it is crucial that the EPA’s proposed regulations be as rigorous as possible today. You can contact the EPA here to offer your comments.

*That’s without considering the hidden costs of energy production and consumption. For a detailed treatment of the “unpriced consequences of energy production and use,” the so-called externalities, click here.

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