Global status report on energy efficiency 2008

Abstract

There is wide agreement that energy efficiency improvement is one of the key strategies to achieve greater sustainability of the energy system. In the past, the contribution of energy efficiency has already been considerable.Without the energy efficiency improvements achieved since the 1970s, current energy use would have been much higher. However, the potential for energy efficiency improvement is much larger than has already been implemented. In the period leading to 2050, it is possible to stabilise worldwide energy use at the current level, while economic growth continues at 2.7 percent per year. However, this will require the ambitious adoption of existing and new energy-efficient technologies. In addition, policies to promote energy efficiency are very important to overcome existing market barriers such as high initial investment costs, split incentives, lack of information and ingrained habits of producers and consumers. In this report, we evaluate the progress in the field of energy efficiency in various sectors such as buildings and appliances, manufacturing industry, transport, agriculture and energy supply in the past years as well as the potential for further energy efficiency improvements for the coming years. This report also addresses what is required to enhance and speed up the rate of energy efficiency improvements to reach its potential levels.