Editors note: when I read this, and then watched the videos from the WEO launch (included for your viewing pleasure below) it took all my self control to not jump out of my chair and scream "BOOYEAH". And yes, I even thought of calling some EE non-believers out there and booyeah-ing them, however I'm a lady first and foremost, so I kept my glee to myself.
Now, more from Dee...
All of us here at the SJVCEO
have been preaching to anyone who will listen about
the power of energy conservation. Well, now we can back that claim up with some
pretty substantial clout. The International Energy Agency (IEA) released the
2012 edition of the World Energy Outlook (WEO) on November 12th. In
that report the IEA states that North America leads the shift in global energy
balance. That shift includes a movement to renewable energy and energy
efficiency that will have a major impact on global energy and climate trends.
North America is at the forefront of a sweeping transformation in oil and gas
production that will affect all regions of the world, yet the potential also
exists for a similarly transformative shift in global energy efficiency.
According to the WEO, we can achieve energy savings equal to nearly a fifth of
global demand in 2010. In other words, energy efficiency is just as important
as unconstrained energy supply, and increased action on efficiency can serve as
a unifying energy policy that brings multiple benefits.
The report calls out six areas that need to be addressed in
order to make the “efficient World Scenario,” a scenario that shows what energy
efficiency improvements can be achieved simply by adopting measures that are
justified in economic terms. The steps include making energy efficiency clearly
visible along with its economic gains, as well as including efficiency concerns
into decision making in government, industry, and society. The IEA report urges policy leaders to deploy a mix of regulations to discourage the
least energy efficient approaches, while incentivizing the most energy
efficient actions.
The report also projects that renewable energy sources could
become the world's second-largest source of power generation by 2015, closing
in on coal as the primary source by 2035. The projection noted that this is
based on continued subsidies, which amounted to $88 billion in 2011.
--Dee Cox
photo credit: International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2012, http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/publications/weo-2012/