ENERGY FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD - World Resources Institute

I. Some Surprises on the Demand Side
A Quiet Revolution in the Making
A
s
painful as the energy crises of the
1970s were, they led to a fundamentally
new approach for managing
energy problems, one that offers the hope of
avoiding recurring energy crises. For the first
time, energy decision-makers turned from the
historical preoccupation with expanding energy
supplies to examine how energy can be used
more effectively in providing such services as
cooking, lighting, space heating and cooling,
refrigeration, and motive power. Decisionmakers
have found that energy services can be
provided cost-effectively with much less energy
than previously thought necessary, and as a
result the historical close correlation between
the level of energy use and economic wellbeing
has been broken. This revolutionary
development has not been reported in dramatic
stories in newspapers and magazines because it
is not the result of any big government or industry
energy projects. Rather, this development
is a quiet revolution in which not one but
myriad solutions to the energy problem are being
found, each matched to one of many
energy end uses. Moreover, the "revolutionaries"
are not just corporate heads of energy
supply companies and government officials,
they are a much more diverse community:
manufacturers of energy-using appliances and
motor vehicles, builders of residential and commercial
buildings, factory owners, homeowners,
and others.
Consider some recent accomplishments. In
the United States the average fuel economy of
new cars and light duty trucks increased 66
percent between 1975 and 1985; by 1985,
resulting fuel savings were equivalent to 2.4
million barrels per day (mbd) of oil, or nearly
60 percent of U.S. oil imports. In Sweden, the
already energy-efficient steel industry, which
accounts for about one fifth of Swedish manufacturing
energy use, reduced its energy requirements
per tonne of steel produced by one
fourth between 1976 and 1983. In Japan, where
refrigerators account for about 30 percent of
residential electricity use, energy requirements
for the average new refrigerator were reduced
two thirds between 1973 and 1982. 4
The aggregate results of such improvements
have been impressive for the countries of the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD). Oil use in OECD countries
fell 15 percent, or 6.1 mbd between 1973
and 1985. In the same period, total energy use
per capita for OECD countries fell 6 percent,
while per capita gross domestic product (GDP)
increased 21 percent. Some countries have
made even more impressive advances. Per
capita energy use in the United States fell 12
percent while per capita GDP rose 17 percent.
In Japan, a 6-percent reduction in per capita
energy use was accompanied by a 46-percent
increase in per capita GDP in this period.