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ENERGY FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD - World Resources Institute

ENERGY FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD - World Resources Institute

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plausible expectations about energy price and<br />

GDP growth, if the non-price-induced energyefficiency<br />

improvement rate can be in the<br />

range 0.5 to 1.0 percent per year.<br />

Although the non-price-induced energyefficiency<br />

improvement rate is a measure of the<br />

public policy effort that would be required to<br />

bring about the energy future described in this<br />

study, not all this efficiency improvement<br />

would have to be public-policy-induced.<br />

Energy-efficiency improvements associated with<br />

general technological innovations have often<br />

been made even when energy prices have been<br />

declining, 13 a phenomenon that led IEA/ORAU<br />

analysts to include the non-price-induced technological<br />

improvement factor in their model for<br />

the industrial sector in the first place. 14<br />

At the same time, however, the energyefficiency<br />

improvement factor may not represent<br />

the full extent of the needed public policy<br />

effort if low energy-demand levels were to<br />

cause energy prices to stabilize or even fall. In<br />

such a case, energy taxes may also be needed<br />

to keep gradual upward pressure on final (consumer)<br />

prices.<br />

117

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