Today I read an interesting article by Michael Grunwald in TIME magazine about energy efficiency. He discusses how it is the first step into solving our country’s energy issues.
“A nationwide push to save ‘negawatts’ instead of building more megawatts could help reverse our unsustainable increases in energy-hogging.” (Note the use of “negawatts” of PSP Blog fame.)
The key to energy efficiency, Grunwald points out, is to not necessarily use less, but to get the same or more energy out of less. In fact, “the Alliance to Save Energy calculates that without the efficiency gains we we’ve made since the last energy crises in 1973, our economy would use nearly 50% more energy today. That’s more than we get from oil, twice what we get from coal or natural gas, and six times what we get from nuclear plants.”
Grunwald goes on to discuss the current roles of Big Business, electric utilities, and the government towards better energy efficiency standards. He comes close, but does not mention the effort of certain residential electric customers in Illinois who lower their usage during peak times.
Here’s the full article.
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