Integrative Design for Radical Energy Efficiency

Delivering the world’s 2005 energy services used ~9x the minimum energy theoretically required for those changes of state, so including passive systems, an estimated ~85% of energy demand (say Cambridge University’s Cullen and Alwood) “could be practically avoided using current knowledge and available technologies.” Economists, however, assume that even the much smaller energy efficiency potential visible in their models must incur steeply rising costs. Yet the empirical reality is the opposite. Integrative design—optimizing buildings, vehicles, factories, and equipment as whole systems, not as isolated components—makes practical energy efficiency gains severalfold larger and cheaper than most experts now suppose. Properly choosing, combining, timing, and sequencing fewer and simpler efficiency techniques can often even yield increasing returns (lower cost with higher volume), akin to those that drive today’s renewable electricity revolution. Across most energy uses in all sectors of the economy, basic physics principles and sound engineering practices thus offer astonishing opportunities to make the world richer, fairer, cooler, cleaner, healthier, and safer—not at a cost but at an immense profit.