$5 trillion energy-saver hiding in plain sight
While we’re waiting around for cold fusion, space mirrors, matrioshka brains or whatever other complicated world-savers the tech wizards are cooking up these days to
While we’re waiting around for cold fusion, space mirrors, matrioshka brains or whatever other complicated world-savers the tech wizards are cooking up these days to address soaring energy demand, a simple, effective solution is already available. It would create trillions of dollars in economic value and millions of jobs while also eliminating billions of tons of climate pollution and hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.The major drawbacks are a) it’s too available, scalable and widely distributed for any one Silicon Valley princeling to become a trillionaire from it and b) it is now, weirdly and depressingly, a partisan issue.This miracle technology is not a new form of energy but simply the magic of using it more wisely. It’s addressing demand rather than supply. The US economy alone could save $4.8 trillion through 2050 by picking an abundance of low-hanging, energy-saving fruit, according to a new report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit research group. All of this fruit-picking and money-saving will be an economic boon that could create 1 million new jobs every year.Also read | Power ministry plans grid for data centres as demand surges“The energy system is facing multiple challenges right now. People are hurting from energy costs, and stress on the electrical grid from new data centers and other loads is growing,” report co-author Lowell Ungar, an ACEEE senior fellow, told me.
“We wanted to look at what could be done about it from the demand side. Trying to fix energy challenges by throwing more supply at them is like fighting with one hand behind your back. It’s costly and really hard.”The ACEEE’s demand-side prescriptions are cheap and really easy. They include setting efficiency standards for homes, offices, appliances, vehicles and more. They include making more and better use of stuff like heat pumps, LED lights and smart manufacturing. They include some financial incentives to carry people through what will overall be a shockingly affordable process anyway. They include smarter use of the electric grid to smooth out demand.All of these run-of-the-mill approaches, in many cases just one technological step up from your dad bugging you to turn the lights off when you leave a room, will lead to less energy demand. Because of Econ 101, this will mean lower energy prices. In some cases, the savings will begin immediately due to lower use of energy and raw materials, meaning the net cost of this demand-side economics will be negative $20 billion from the jump and steadily improve from there, averaging $215 billion in savings per year. This is the money for nothing spoken of in legend.132460102As a side effect of all this energy non-use, peak US electricity demand will be 440 gigawatts lower by 2050, freeing up the output of about 400 power plants.
The BriefWire