Shifting Demand: From the Economic Imperative of Energy Efficiency to Business Models that Engage and Empower Consumers

Historically, advances in energy efficiency have been a primary driver of economic productivity. The availability of high quality and affordable electricity has been a significant contributor to past productivity improvements. The last several decades, however, have experienced anemic productivity gains due, in large part, to a weakening rate of improvement in converting total “raw energy” into actual “useful energy.” In order to maintain a robust economy over the next several decades, it is necessary to simultaneously effectuate a decrease in the cost of energy services as well as a paradoxical increase in “useful energy’ consumption by reducing the waste associated with the larger demand for raw energy. Finally, in order to achieve these critical gains in energy efficiency, the development of new business models are required to improve system efficiencies in ways that maintain the robustness of the future economy. This chapter considers the next generation of energy efficiency approaches, designed to realize significant energy reductions in already-efficient buildings. Three quite different approaches are discussed, that represent the breadth of new energy efficiency technology- solar cooling systems, comfort based HVAC control, and energy behavior intervention, that each shows great promise. Ultimately, realizing energy savings is a continual process, with no end in sight – no matter how efficient a building is, with these technologies, further savings can be made.