Energy Efficiency Is Key To Taking On Climate Change—Here Are The Numbers That Matter

Energy efficiency isn’t as sexy as inventing new, cleaner forms of power. But, if you care about climate change, you really ought to care about it. Efficiency will need to account for a third of emissions reductions by 2040 if we’re stay within relatively safe global warming limits, according to the International Energy Agency.

“Simply put, there are no realistic or affordable energy and climate change policy without a sizable and vigorous energy efficiency component,” the IEA says in a new report.

The good news is we are becoming smarter about energy use. Energy “intensity”—the amount of energy needed to generate a unit of global GDP—improved by 1.8% last year. That was higher than in 2014, even though energy prices have been falling, which normally encourages people to use more energy, not less. Read more…