The Twin Pillars of Sustainable Energy: Synergies between Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Technology and Policy

Bill Prindle and Maggie Eldridge, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
Mike Eckhardt and Alyssa Frederick, American Council on Renewable Energy

May 2007

Energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) are the “twin pillars” of sustainable energy policy. Both resources must be developed aggressively if we are to stabilize and reduce carbon dioxide emissions in our lifetimes. Efficiency is essential to slowing the energy demand growth so that rising clean energy supplies can make deep cuts in fossil fuel use. If energy use grows too fast, renewable energy development will chase a receding target. Likewise, unless clean energy supplies come online rapidly, slowing demand growth will only begin to reduce total emissions; reducing the carbon content of energy sources is also needed. Any serious vision of a sustainable energy economy thus requires major commitments to both efficiency and renewables.

Policies and programs for energy efficiency and renewable energy have generally been pursued on separate tracks. For example, different organizations take the lead on efficiency and renewable energy, and while there are statements of joint support and some coordination, it is could be more coordinated and strategically integrated. With the growth and increasing success of various clean energy industries, groups focused on these technologies have been addressing increasingly diverse agendas. This has created some divergences in policy priorities, such as the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and Production Tax Credits (PTC) for renewables vs. Energy Efficiency Resource Standards (EERS), Public Benefits Funds (PBFs), building energy codes, and appliance standards for efficiency. While these individual policies are each worthwhile, greater synergies between efficiency and renewable energy could be realized if the various clean energy communities combined their policy agendas more effectively.

This project, supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, was commissioned to better define the most promising synergies between energy efficiency and renewable energy, from both a technical and a policy viewpoint, and to recommend some next steps toward a more coordinated set of policies and programs to increase the joint contributions of efficiency and renewables to a sustainable energy future.

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51 pp., 2007, $25.00, E074