Clean energy innovation is an inspiring development that The Optimist Daily reports on every day. But it’s only part of the journey to a clean, green and healthy society. There’s a lot of energy and money to be saved as well as money to be made through energy efficiency. The good news is we are becoming smarter about energy use. Energy “intensity”—the amount of energy needed to generate a unit of global GDP—improved by 1.8 percent last year. That was higher than in 2014, even though energy prices have been falling, which normally encourages people to use more energy, not less. Between 2000 and 2015 western countries improved their energy intensity by an average of 14 percent. That’s the equivalent of 450 million tons of oil, or enough to power Japan for a whole year.
Clean energy innovation is great but energy efficiency can provide huge gains
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