Description of Each Renewable Energy Source
I will explore energy efficiency as I believe it must be the first priority. Just like in nation's debt reduction or personal finance, if money is wasted foolishly and nobody pays attention to curve the spending, problem will continue and likely result in sudden bankruptcy. This is true even with some revenue increase. Building asset takes time while depleting it can happen quickly. Improving energy efficiency is like understanding your cash flow and balance sheet, setting up budget and paying off your debts.
Based on Rockfeller Foundation published paper titled “United States Building Energy Efficiency Retrofits”, over 3,033 Trillion Btu (roughly 900 million MWh) of energy can be saved by investing $279 billion to energy efficient retrofit for residential and commercial buildings in US, which would save $1 trillion over 10 years period in return. Commercial sector savings in this paper, published in March 2012, is 1,141 TBtu. DOE website currently states they strive to reduce commercial sector consumption by at least 1,600 TBtu, which is higher than one by projected in Rockfeller paper.
ACEEE(American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy), in it’s report titled “The Long-Term Energy Efficiency Potential”, suggests by improving building shells, residential and commercial sectors can reduce 40-60% of heating and cooling loads in existing buildings and 70-90% in new buildings. DOE states over 50% of energy in buildings are used for cooling and heating. This suggests, roughly speaking, more than 25% of energy used in build environments can be reduced by improving building shells alone. That equivalents to over 1 billion MWh we don’t need to produce every year. Back Next
