A friend of mine was walking through a parking lot the other day when he came upon an acquaintance (we’ll call him Ralph) in an SUV, the motor running and the A/C on. It’s worth noting that Ralph is a highly successful, generous person, noted for his expertise in his career and his community involvement.
When my friend remarked on the obvious waste of gas, Ralph replied, “My gas is free.” It seems his employer pays for his fuel.
Your initial reaction to this is probably pretty much the same as mine was. But don’t be so quick to judge. The fact is that we all waste energy. The only difference is the degree of subtlety, social acceptability, and perhaps most importantly, awareness. When we use a drive-up window at a business instead of parking and going inside to conduct our business, when we drive far faster than we really need to, when we keep the thermostat too high in the winter and too low in the summer, we are no different than Ralph.
But on a much larger scale, the fact remains that there are built-in inefficiencies of how we use energy. In the U.S., more than half of the energy (58%) we generate every day is wasted. In an average car, only 20 percent of gasoline is used and only 31.2 percent of the energy consumed in an electric power plant is delivered to consumers as electricity. As a nation, we are sitting in a parked SUV with the motor running.
Why? Because we, like Ralph, tend to use energy without considering (or even grasping) the fact that its inefficient use — whether by personal behavior, government policy, or technology — has a real cost to us personally and to our nation that goes beyond the wallet. In other words, the traditional American energy policy of “cheap energy at any price,” is deeply engrained in our society. I think that’s one of the key reasons why conservation, an essential element of any energy policy, doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves.
Consider the debate underway at all levels of government and society regarding our present energy crisis. Most of it is limited to the monetary aspects of the crisis. Yes, the dollar cost of energy is extremely important, but if our approach to solving the current energy crisis is only based on dollars, we will be a living example of my favorite definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.” We know from past history and from the present situation faced by nations that subsidize their citizen’s energy costs that any contrived effort to make energy “cheap,” is only, at best, a temporary fix that in reality makes things worse down the road.
It is absolutely critical that conservation be included in any approach to solve our energy crisis. But let’s define the term: I think too many of us think of “conservation” as “going without.” Not so. In a proper approach to energy policy, conservation means “wise use.” Such “wise use” applies not only to personal energy consumption, but also to the question of what energy technologies we encourage and adopt, their environmental impact, and the need for sufficient supply.
Our use of energy has all kinds of costs. There are monetary costs, social costs, security costs, and environmental costs. But it is possible to have, in the truest sense, an affordable energy future. How? With a “portfolio approach” to meeting our country’s present energy crisis and future energy needs. This portfolio includes traditional and alternative fuels, improvements to existing technology, development of new technology, and the true meaning of conservation.