Editorial Board
Energy Efficiency Is Long Overdue
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On a global scale, we humans are becoming more energy efficient with each passing year. Even so, we’re exploiting only a fraction of the technological opportunities to use energy more cost-effectively. There’s a lot governments can do to put this right.
Worldwide, the amount of energy employed to produce a unit of gross domestic product fell by 0.4 percent a year from 2000 to 2010, according to the International Energy Agency. Last year and the year before, the annual decline accelerated to 1.5 percent. Looking ahead 20 years, though, the IEA (in effect, a club of energy ministers) estimates that two-thirds of the potential for energy efficiency will remain unexploited.