The End of Energy Efficiency Improvements = The Start of Energy Savings?!

摘要

While increased energy efficiency of household appliances has reduced energyconsumption to levels below a business as usual scenario, it has not resulted in decreasedhousehold electricity consumption. Current appliance policies are based on improving the energyefficiency of selected appliances and these alone will not achieve the targets that have beenagreed under the Kyoto protocol. Furthermore, some appliance trends worsen the problems forcurrent policies. For white goods for instance, energy efficiency improvements are slowing dueto technical limits, whereas the increasing number and the changing identity of appliances makeestablishing policies more difficult.The concept of sustainable energy balance is presented as an alternative policyframework to make the change from appliance efficiency alone to a set of integrated policies thatresult in the decrease of household CO2 emissions. In the sustainable energy balance scenario,energy consumption equals sustainable production of energy. The CO2 target for households is,like the targets for other sectors, derived from higher level policy goals. Financial instruments(e.g. an energy tax) and information instruments (e.g. feedback on household electricityconsumption) are suggested as useful instruments at a household level to achieve householdtargets. Appliance efficiency policies will continue to play an important role in this broaderpolicy goal, as will policies to increase the sustainable production of energy.