ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Energy efficiency is using less energy to provide the same level of energy service। For example, insulating a home allows a building to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a comfortable temperature। Another example would be installing fluorescent lights and/or skylights instead of incandescent lights to attain the same level of illumination। A 13 watt fluorescent light bulb outputs the same amount of visible light as a 60 watt incandescent bulb, so you are getting the same amount light for less energy.[2] Efficient energy use is achieved primarily by means of a more efficient technology or processes rather than by changes in individual behaviour.[3]

Energy efficient buildings, industrial processes and transportation could reduce the world's energy needs in 2050 by one third, and help controlling global emissions of greenhouse gases, according to the International Energy Agency.[4]
Energy efficiency and renewable energy are said to be the twin pillars of sustainable energy policy.


Energy कोन्सेर्वतिओन

Energy conservation is broader than energy efficiency in that it encompasses using less energy to achieve a lesser energy service, for example through behavioural change, as well as encompassing energy efficiency. Examples of conservation without efficiency improvements would be heating a room less in winter, driving less, or working in a less brightly lit room. As with other definitions, the boundary between efficient energy use and energy conservation can be fuzzy, but both are important in environmental and economic terms. This is especially the case when actions are directed at the saving of fossil fuels.[20]


If the demand for energy services remains constant, improving energy efficiency will reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. However, many efficiency improvements do not reduce energy consumption by the amount predicted by simple engineering models. This is because they make energy services cheaper, and so consumption of those services increases. For example, since fuel efficient vehicles make travel cheaper, consumers may choose to drive further and/or faster, thereby offsetting some of the potential energy savings. This is an example of the direct rebound effect.[22]
Estimates of the size of the rebound effect range from roughly 5% to 40%.[23][24][25] Rebound effects are smaller in mature markets where demand is saturated, and in markets with inelastic demand curves (versus elastic demand curves). For example, if the amount of time people spend driving is largely determined by their commuting distance and the degree of gridlock they encounter, and not by the price of gasoline, then the degree of the rebound effect will be smaller than if gasoline price was the primary determining factor in distance driven. The rebound effect is likely to be less than 30% at the household level and may be closer to 10% for transport.[22] A rebound effect of 30% implies that improvements in energy efficiency should achieve 70% of the reduction in energy consumption projected using engineering models.
Since more efficient (and hence cheaper) energy will also lead to faster economic growth, there are suspicions that improvements in energy efficiency may eventually lead to even faster resource use. This was postulated by economists in the 1980s and remains a controversial hypothesis. Ecological economists have suggested that any cost savings from efficiency gains be taxed away by the government in order to avoid this outcome.

WHAT HAVE YOU TO SAY ON ENERGY EFFICIENCY?

Onshore and Offshore Locations for Wind Power Development – What Does the Public Prefer and Should It Matter?

In the renewable energy sector there is continuous striving to develop new and more efficient methods and technologies to reduce the costs of power generation, and wind power generation is no exception. However, besides the continuous effort to develop better and cheaper turbines, wind power generation faces an increasing challenge that has a strong influence on the overall welfare economic efficiency of wind turbines. More specifically, non-wind-resource arguments have emerged and are pointing towards the fact that the external costs of wind power locations can potentially have a significant impact on the costs of wind power generation. An externality or external cost is a cost that a project inflicts on other people but that is not compensated for and, therefore, is not included in the costs of the project. Typical wind power externalities are visual and aural and can have a negative influence on property prices and revenue from recreational activities.

The link between wind power generation (as well as other renewable and non-renewable energy generation sources) and external costs has been recognised for many years. One of the first systematic attempts to assess and quantify these costs was carried out by the External costs of Energy (ExternE) network during the 1990s. However, in the period following this, the information on external costs, people’s preferences and economic assessment of potential sites and turbine configurations (size, grouping and structure, etc.) has increased. In particular, stated preference (SP) surveys aiming at identifying preferences in terms of willingness to pay for different wind turbine/farm outlays have grown in number. SP surveys entail a bundle of economic valuation methods developed to identify and elicit preferences/willingness to pay for nonmarket goods such as the external costs of wind power generation. Since the 1980s, these studies have been used in fields such as marketing, transport, health and environmental economics and as an input in cost–benefit analyses.