PCEEE - energy efficiency conference

I attended today part of PCEEE - Portugal em conferência para uma economia energeticamente eficiente.

This conference was organized by CENSE, ISR, UC, Quercus and IST.

Some interesting information I gathered:
- Energy efficiency is important in all the stages of the electric system.
- Lobbys that advocate for energy efficiency are not too powerful so it does not have the importance in public agenda that it should have.
- Policies associated with energy efficiency measures do not have enough visibility compared with renewable energies, for example.
- Negawatt hour does not have a direct value associated; only an indirect value related with CO2 eq emissions.
- Studies indicate that energy efficiency costs less to implement and has more direct impacts in energy supply and demand because when reducing energy consumption at home we are indirectly increasing the comfort index.
- In transportation, the average occupation of vehicles (private or public transportation) is about 20%. For cars this represents about 1.2 passengers per car.
- There is an Action Plan in preparation by the EU. It should be released in the summer of 2011 and it focus on increasing energy efficiency standards of existing buildings (30 million buildings should have deep renovations by 2020). The problem with this Action Plan is that it seems to be more a set of guidelines and a strategy than measures and actions.
- A lot of problems pose when thinking about financing existing buildings renovations, but there should be no "cherry picking". If you consider that the renovation cycle is of about 30 years, if you today renovated your building by 20%, the rest will be left to renovate 30 years later.

Some interesting links:
European Council for an energy efficient economy
Portugal Clima 2020 (in portuguese)
Ecocasa Quercus
Top ten Quercus
Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the US economy, McKinsey study