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A misunderstanding of the difference between sustainability versus energy efficiency is preventing practitioners from reaching their goals of helping the environment.
Roughly 10 years ago, corporations woke to the realization that energy is expensive. Prior to that, energy was a tool, worth any cost, to power economic growth (a perception that continues today in the halls of Congress). Using more fuel to power a delivery truck to drive faster to save time was well worth whatever fuel costs incurred.
The sustainability movement showed companies how they could save money. In this case, a slower delivery vehicle saves enough on fuel to offset what it loses in time. Sustainability practitioners have a litany of similar low-hanging fruit that is currently saving corporations millions of dollars each year, but that has had an unfortunate side effect on our industry.
Sustainability currently consists of 99 percent cost savings and 1 percent environmental savings. That 1 percent is really only PR value or employee buy-in. It's the incentive that keeps sustainability practitioners working hard. A focus on energy efficiency has distracted our industry from the original goal -- an impact on the environment.
Energy efficiency does nothing for the environment. In fact, it may even be worse for the environment than doing nothing at all. Efficiency equals increased profitability. Increased profitability leads to growth. Growth leads to the use of more energy.
Energy efficiency = profits = growth = higher energy use
Don't get me wrong, growth is great. But if it isn't sustainable growth, then what have we accomplished?
The problem lies largely in our misallocation of blame. Consider the following two familiar statistics:
1. IT equipment is responsible for 2 percent of the world's CO2e emissions.
2. Buildings are responsible for 40 percent of the world's CO2e emissions.
You've probably heard them before. In fact, you're probably doing everything you can to cut those numbers down by employing every energy efficient device known to man.
You are wasting our time.
You are not addressing the root of the problem. You are shaving the hydra's beard. Buildings and IT equipment, in fact, are responsible for precisely 0 percent of the world's CO2e emissions. It is the coal fired power plant they draw their energy from that creates the emissions. To cover the example used earlier, a more efficient truck still uses diesel fuel. Until we address this single issue of energy input, we are failing to mitigate any adverse environmental effects by addressing energy output.
energy efficiency vs sustainability
It's a good point that just because you've reduced your energy consumption does not mean that you are behaving sustainably.
But that doesn't mean that it's meaningless or insignificant to reduce your consumption.
In this gluttonous land of ours anyone who manages to reduce their consumption of anything should be applauded! And it's a valuable goal for businesses to reduce their consumption of energy.
But it's true that we should not give companies a free pass on sustainability just for that.
We should raise the bar higher and demand they show they have, for instance, lowered their energy operating costs consistently over an extended period of time, or used a reduction in energy consumption as part of a sustainable growth program.
We should make their earn it, in other words, while continuing to encourage less consumption.
Ring-fence savings to invest in further energy reduction measure
I agree with much of what has been said... the rebound effect i.e. I saved money on electricity so I can now afford fights to New York / I went to the gym so now I can have a pizza is a huge problem to overcome when we are trying to make genuine improvements overall.
A sensible way to avoid these unintended consequences is there for to ring-fence funds for investing in more energy efficiency activities.
Some energy-efficiency measures quickly pay for themselves while other investments can take much longer to payback from a financial perspective.
Therefore we can use the money saved from those that pay-back to fund measures that wouldn't make financial sense on their own. In this way we can make two positive energy reductions and balance costs. Perfect.
Kyocera have been successfully using this wise approach in their UK business.
Energy Efficiency doesn't always equal growth
Energy efficiency does nothing for the environment. In fact, it may even be worse for the environment than doing nothing at all. Efficiency equals increased profitability. Increased profitability leads to growth. Growth leads to the use of more energy.
A little too simplistic! Energy efficiency is a tool is the arsenal of business leaders: what they choose to do with it is up to them. Right now, whilst we're still in the grips of a global downturn, the emphasis of CEOs is to cut costs just to stay afloat, not to achieve growth. Energy efficiency is one of many tools which some companies can use to achieve that goal, along with more damaging but immediate strategies such as redundancies and closures.
Energy efficiency doesn't even necessarily provide a stronger footing for growth coming out of the recession. With the prospect of ever-increasing energy bills, largely through investment into more expensive low-carbon energy sources, many companies' achievements in energy efficiency are likely to simply offset these price increases, unless their business can achieve big reductions from simple projects such as energy-efficient lighting. However, the larger and more complex a company is, the harder it is to achieve massive efficiency increases which will outweigh energy cost increases in the future.
Businesses can't change the energy mix directly, except through roll-outs of on-site renewable power which just doesn't stack up economically for most companies. However, through greater widespread energy efficiency we can reduce our overall power consumption, reducing the number of new power stations that we need to construct and allowing faster decommissioning of existing coal power stations.
Energy efficiency is not sustainability. But until sustainability starts to make the kind of impact on the minds of business leaders that energy efficiency has, we have to console ourselves that at least one green business practice has become mainstream. Sustainability has to pull off the same trick and clearly demonstrate it's business case before it can make the impact that we all know it could achieve.