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Please read my previous posts on the use of per-capita energy consumption.
It is a VERY poor way to compare nations.
I'd like to see someone DO THE NUMBERS for a 50% energy reduction.
California's 2/3 energy use doesn't impress me. If the population centers
(San Diego to San Francisco) had to suffer through sub zero winters and
triple digit summers, the energy use would be somewhat different. ;-)
My project groups struggle every year (between efficiency and conservation)
to come up with a 25% savings--and we DO the numbers. Once you double (even triple) small vehicle mileage and put in as many heat pumps as possible you are a long way short of 25%.
You can't do much with big trucks or rail traffic, and despite the inefficiency, air travel is not that big of the total.
You have less than 1% of the total energy use to be saved with CFLs.
Industrial numbers are hard to come by, but since energy efficiency is part
of the 'bottom line' we can be pretty sure that newer facilities are pretty
energy efficient.
Certainly most commercial/institutional lighting has been
fluorescent for some time now. When you get into conservation, you again
find the biggest savings would be something like massive car-pooling, but
you've already cut
passenger use by maybe 2/3 so the energy savings are much smaller than
anticipated. When you do the overall numbers for appliances and maybe get
rid of all energy using recreational vehicles (say goodbye to the small city
in which I live--in the news lately--Elkhart Indiana) you find that is a
small percentage as well. We can ship all the heavy manufacturing overseas
(Oh, sorry, we are doing that!), sell more Sri Lankan sweaters and mandate
thermostats be set just slightly above freezing, hope the recession becomes
a depression--no one working means no one commuting, foreclose the remaining
single-family homes and move everyone into boxy apartments, vacate all the
states (including California) West of the Mississippi, or some other
draconian measures like these, but otherwise I really don't see the 50% as a
reasonable, achievable goal.
Japan seems to be the 'poster child' here for efficiency--approximately the
50% less energy usage per (person, GDP, etc), but there are tremendous
differences. Japan has 10 times the population density of the U.S. and only
a fraction of the land area. Most of their raw materials are imported (but
whose balance sheet gets charged for the energy to mine and ship these?),
the culture is much different (largely due to the high population density)
but also for historical reasons.
So...I think we can struggle to a 25% savings--but I find 50% far fetched.