Energy Efficiency and the Negawatt

The concept of the “negawatt” has been in our vocabulary for several decades now; I believe it was the creation of environmental scientist Amory Lovins (pictured).  The idea is simply that the cheapest and most environmentally friendly kilowatt-hour of electricity is the one we don’t generate in the first place.

Here’s an article that quantifies all this, and explains how reducing power consumption with energy efficiency costs roughly one-third as much  as the least expensive way of generating electricity–along with a chart that makes this very clear indeed.

Of course, all this applies only to the developed world; there are 300 million people in India alone (out of a total population of 1.4 billion) who have no access to electrical power at all.  In places like these, establishing microgrids based principally on solar and wind is an extremely high priority, as electricity drives education and education drives stronger, healthier, and smaller families.