America's Untapped Energy Resource: Boosting Efficiency

This may sound too good to be true, but the U.S. has a renewable-energy resource that is perfectly clean, remarkably cheap, surprisingly abundant and immediately available. It has astounding potential to reduce the carbon emissions that threaten our planet, the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our security and the energy costs that threaten our wallets. Unlike coal and petroleum, it doesn't pollute; unlike solar and wind, it doesn't depend on the weather; unlike ethanol, it doesn't accelerate deforestation or inflate food prices; unlike nuclear plants, it doesn't raise uncomfortable questions about meltdowns or terrorist attacks or radioactive-waste storage, and it doesn't take a decade to build. It isn't what-if like hydrogen, clean coal and tidal power; it's already proven to be workable, scalable and cost-effective. And we don't need to import it.

This miracle juice goes by the distinctly boring name of energy efficiency, and it's often ignored in the hubbub over alternative fuels, the nuclear renaissance, T. Boone Pickens and the green-tech economy. Clearly, it needs an agent.

-- TIME, Dec. 31, 2008

Energy savings by 2020 from recently adopted fluorescent light tube standards: 58 billion kilowatt-hours a year - enough to power 5 million U.S. households.

Potential energy savings by 2030 from all appliance standards under review by the Department of Energy: 165 billion kilowatt-hours a year.

Potential cost savings on energy bills: $16 billion a year.

New dirty power plants that won't be needed: 200 plants @ 300 megawatts each.

Global warming CO2 emissions eliminated each year: 150 million metric tons.

Jobs created by adoption of a national efficiency standard requiring a 15% cut in electricity use and 10% cut in natural gas use: 222,000