Forecasting an Increasing Role for Energy Efficiencyin Meeting Global Climate Goals

摘要

A number of studies over the past decade and longer have shown how energy efficiencycan achieve a large fraction, or all, of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions necessary to meetthe goals of the Kyoto Protocol in the United States. But few studies suggest that we can gosignificantly beyond these goals, particularly on a global basis, as is required for climatestabilization. If energy models show that cost effective measures such as energy efficiency arenot sufficient to meet climate goals, then economic models will show that the costs of climatepolicies are unnecessarily high.This paper focuses on the potential for continuous improvement in energy efficiencybased on voluntary efficiency programs' ability to use demand pull strategies such as markettransformation to introduce more efficient technology into the marketplace and mandatorypolicies such as minimum efficiency standards that are upgraded regularly to eliminate theobsolete models. These two policies are interrelated: both efficiency advocates andmanufacturers are recognizing the advantages to having "premium" levels of energy efficiencyinduced by market transformation programs as well as mandatory standards and have recognizedthat the market demonstration of these higher levels of efficiency often leads to upgrades in theminimum standards. But even after the upgrade, continued existence of market transformationprograms provides manufacturers with an incentive to redesign, not just to meet the standards,but to go beyond them, at least for a fraction of their products. As manufacturers strive to takeadvantage of this dynamic, even higher levels of energy efficiency are achieved. These newtechnologies are almost never included in forecasts.We will document the dynamic process of encouraging continuous technologicalimprovement through a combination of research, market transformation, incentives, standards,and market forces, and suggest options for forecasting and scenario planning based on theseobservations. We will compare forecasting assumptions used in analysis of future appliancestandards for the base case to energy models used in analyses of global warming scenarios. Bothwill be contrasted to our analyses of the dynamic voluntary/mandatory piggybacking of demandpull and higher minimum standards policies on efficiency forecasts for common technologies inthe residential and commercial sectors.