What's the difference between energy efficiency and energy conservation? According to a recent special report by The New York Times, energy conservation is when one turns out a light upon leaving a room and energy efficiency is changing out a incandesenct light bulb for a compact flourescent light (CFL) bulb.An exerpt from the article is as follows:
In transportation, “we could double fuel economy for light-duty vehicles by 2035 without changing the size or acceleration of vehicles,” said Lester B. Lave, an economics and engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the chairman of a 2010 report on efficiency potential from the National Academy of Sciences.
He said buildings could use nearly 60 percent less electricity by 2030 by installing existing technologies, like compact fluorescents or LEDs, insulation, double- or triple-paned windows, and on-demand or solar hot water heaters. Tuning up and optimizing settings on climate controls would also contribute.
Experts say that economy-wide efficiency improvements could have a head-turning effect on the U.S. energy mix, helping to halt climate change, reduce energy insecurity and fix the economy. Yet in the vociferous debate about how to get off fossil fuels, efficiency has taken a back seat — partly because of the difficulty of talking about it concretely.
“It’s harder to talk about something that doesn’t exist, that you don’t produce,” said Cathy Zoi, the assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy at the U.S. Energy Department.Highlighting this blind spot is a recent book, “Invisible Energy: Strategies to Rescue the Economy and Save the Planet,” by David Goldstein, a physicist who won the MacArthur genius award in 2002 and works as energy program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group.
Mr. Goldstein argues that the United States could reduce its projected energy consumption 88 percent by 2050, and that a 30 percent reduction is possible by 2020.
For more, visit the New York Times.
