Energy conservation refers to efforts made to reduce energy consumption. Energy conservation can be achieved through increased efficient energy use, in conjunction with decreased energy consumption and/or reduced consumption from conventional energy sources.
Energy conservation can result in increased financial capital, environmental quality, national security, personal security, and human comfort. Individuals and organizations that are direct consumers of energy choose to conserve energy to reduce energy costs and promote economic security. Industrial and commercial users can increase energy use efficiency to maximize profit.
Building Design
Elements of passive solar design, shown in a direct gain application
In passive solar building design, windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer. This is called passive solar design or climatic design because, unlike active solar heating systems, it doesn’t involve the use of mechanical and electrical devices.
The key to designing a passive solar building is to best take advantage of the local climate. Elements to be considered include window placement and glazing type, thermal insulation, thermal mass, and shading. Passive solar design techniques can be applied most easily to new buildings, but existing buildings can be adapted or “retrofitted”.
Climate Change
By reducing emissions, energy conservation is an important part of lessening climate change. Energy conservation facilitates the replacement of non-renewable resources with renewable energy. Energy conservation is often the most economical solution to energy shortages, and is a more environmentally benign alternative to increased energy production.
Energy Conservation in the U.S.
The United States is currently the second largest single consumer of energy, following China. The U.S. Department of Energy categorizes national energy use in four broad sectors: transportation, residential, commercial, and industrial.
Energy usage in transportation and residential sectors, about half of U.S. energy consumption, is largely controlled by individual consumers. Commercial and industrial energy expenditures are determined by businesses entities and other facility managers. National energy policy has a significant effect on energy usage across all four sectors, and its strengthening is part of the 2010 Presidential-Congressional legislative debate.
Energy Conservation Issues
- The use of telecommuting by major corporations is a significant opportunity to conserve energy, as many Americans now work in service jobs that enable them to work from home instead of commuting to work each day.
- Electric motors consume more than 60% of all electrical energy generated and are responsible for the loss of 10 to 20% of all electricity converted into mechanical energy.
- Consumers are often poorly informed of the savings of energy efficient products. The research one must put into conserving energy often is too time consuming and costly when there are cheaper products and technology available using today’s fossil fuels. Some governments and NGOs are attempting to reduce this complexity with ecolabels that make differences in energy efficiency easy to research while shopping.
- Technology needs to be able to change behavioral patterns, it can do this by allowing energy users, business and residential, to see graphically the impact their energy use can have in their workplace or homes. Advanced real-time energy metering is able to help people save energy by their actions. Rather than become wasteful automatic energy saving technologies, real-time energy monitors and meters such as the Energy Detective, Enigin Plc’s Eniscope, Ecowizard, or solutions like EDSA’a Paladin Live are examples of such solutions.
- It is frequently argued that effective energy conservation requires more than informing consumers about energy consumption, for example through smart meters at home or ecolabels while shopping. People need practical and tailored advice how to reduce energy consumption in order to make change easy and lasting. This applies to both efficiency investments, such as investment in building renovation, or behavioral change, for example turning down the heating. To provide the kind of information and support people need to invest money, time and effort in energy conservation, it is important to understand and link to people’s topical concerns.
- Some retailers argue that bright lighting stimulates purchasing. However, health studies have demonstrated that headache, stress, blood pressure, fatigue and worker error all generally increase with the common over-illumination present in many workplace and retail settings. It has been shown that natural daylighting increases productivity levels of workers, while reducing energy consumption.
