Interview with Randall Bowie about energy efficiency (in Portuguese)

Randall Bowie worked for the EC and helped set the energy policy. He is now a consultant in Rockwool International. He was one of the speakers at PCEEE.


Jornal Público publishes an interview with him.

Goal 2020 - strategy for Portugal

Biosfera is a portuguese television show dedicated to the environment.
One of the last shows was about the Portuguese energy paradigm and the strategy for 2020.
Video (in portuguese)

Energy intensity data

World energy intensity (2009)

Energy intensity from 1990 to 2009 (koe/$05p)

Energy intensity per region (2009)

World energy intensity has been slowly decreasing.
CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States; includes Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) countries are the main contributors to energy intensity, followed by Africa and the Middle East. Europe has the lower share (8% and less than 0.15 koe/$05p).

Source:
ENERDATA

World electricity consumption per sector

Source: IEA, 2007

The Figure above shows the world electricity consumption per sector.
Residential and commercial and public services account for 50% and industry for 42%.

The dirty truth about plug-in hybrid cars

An interesting article in the Scientific American points out that although electric cars are emissions free on the road, their charging will increase electricity consumption and can also increase emissions depending on the fuels used to produce that electricity.

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

Fossil fuel subsidies

According to IEA, fossil fuel subsidies amounted to $557 billion in 2008. This represents an increase from $342 billion in 2007. Fossil fuel subsidies are leading to higher levels of consumption and not promoting energy efficiency nor the switch from fossil fuels to alternative, renewable fuels.

“Many governments are giving subsidies to fossil fuel production and consumption that encourage greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time as they are spending on projects to promote clean energy,” says Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General. “This is a wasteful use of scarce budget resources.”

Source of this information:
Energy Efficiency News