‘Conserve, conserve, conserve’
With the world’s energy needs growing rapidly, can zero-carbon energy options be scaled up enough to make a significant difference? How much of a dent can these alternatives make in the world’s total energy usage over the next half-century? As the MIT Energy Initiative approaches its fifth anniversary next month, this five-part series takes a broad view of the likely scalable energy candidates.It’s often overlooked in discussions of how to meet the world’s growing appetite for energy, but many analysts say it’s the single biggest potential contributor to meeting the world’s energy needs: efficiency.Doing more with less fuel or electricity could reduce humanity’s energy demands by as much as half. No technological breakthroughs are needed for such savings, just some well-designed regulations and policies.Improving energy efficiency is not only a good idea, says Daniel Nocera, it is “absolutely essential, at an unprecedented scale.” How big a scale? According to Nocera,...