In a June 1999 workshop, U.S. photovoltaics industry leaders gathered to analyze technology barriers and research needs of the industry and to create a roadmap for the industry to reach its full market potential. The PV Roadmap Steering Committee suggests an aggressive growth strategy with a goal of providing 15 percent of new U.S. peak generating capacity by 2020, at a growth rate of 25 percent a year. Some of the areas selected as high priorities include creating an effective industry coalition, educating the public, and long-term, low interest financing.
In a thoughtful paper, Ed Cohen-Rosenthal and Mary Schlarb of Cornell’s Work and Environment Initiative look at how to make renewable energy use and energy efficiency the norm rather than an exception in the United States. They see codes, construction bonds and pension investments as leverage points. They say, “Using economics alone we are stuck chasing our tail: scale leads to lower costs, lower costs are dependent on scale.” To overcome this dilemma they suggest aggregating demand by targeting markets such as public housing, government buildings, faith-based institutions, and schools and colleges.
Despite impressive evidence that investments in energy efficiency are profitable, much of our country’s commercial building stock has poor performance. Why hasn’t the market responded to the high rate of return achievable through energy savings? The authors of Closing the Efficiency Gap: Using Profit to Drive the Capture of Value,” believe significant institutional and organization barriers defy economics. They describe the culprits as: motivation, financing and know-how.
One of the ways to “close the efficiency gap” is through the use of equipment efficiency standards and labels. The Alliance to Save Energy (an author of the above report) has joined with the International Institute for Energy Conservation and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to assist developing countries to design and implement standards and labels. Developing countries are expected to invest about $97
billion annually between 1995-2010 in new electricity capacity to meet rising demand.
Efficiency improvements in buildings could reduce that demand by 25-44 percent.
The program is called “CLASP” and you can learn about it at: [sorry this link is no longer available]
To learn about the benefits of standards and labels: [sorry this link is no longer available]
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