Energy Efficiency Still Has Room for Improvement

Reader Contribution by Kellsey Trimble
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Improving energy efficiency is on everyone’s minds these days. However, it could actually be getting worse, not better, in the United States.

Lloyd Alter, managing editor and editor of design for TreeHugger, says that according to the Lawrence Livermore energy use graph, “Our energy systems are shockingly inefficient, with 71% of the energy we create being wasted. Getting it to zero is impossible, but there certainly is room for a lot of improvement. In fact we wasted 3.5 quads more in 2012 than we did in 2009. (A quad is a quadrillion British thermal units.)”

Though renewable resource use is up, making for a lighter carbon footprint, there are still problem areas where efficiency could improve. Transportation efficiency is the worst. “The idea of pushing a ton of metal to move 200 pounds of flesh is just insanely inefficient. This doesn’t even account for the energy used in maintaining the infrastructure and building the roads; it is an inherently stupid way to design a transportation system,” says Alter.

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