When I say “energy efficiency”, what comes to mind? I’m sure that you aren’t thinking about the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions! Despite the lack of attention it receives from major environmental organizations, energy efficiency is by far the most promising approach to climate mitigation as shown by a new report from a business consulting firm and by the upsurge in student activism aimed at reducing their communities’ energy bills.

Last month, the McKinsey consulting firm released a report highlighting the immense potential for energy efficiency to quickly and cost-effectively reduce our carbon footprint. In it they highlighted that energy efficiency alone could easily reduce our energy use 23% by 2020. These are targeted investments that pay for themselves (referred to as NPV-Positive in the report) and provide an immense  gain to our economy once you add in (and these cost saving-factors are not included in the report) the side benefits associate with job creation, improved air quality and health of residents, increased productivity, and, of course, weakening the climate crisis.  Check out this graph summarizing their findings. The width of the columns indicates how many Gigatons of CO2 could be saved a year by implementing the measure and their vertical height indicated the incremental cost per ton of CO2 saved (from a previousMcKinsey report). You will see that most energy efficiency investments will have a strong payback, whereas other forms of energy improvements are somewhat costly (check out how expensive Coal plants with Carbon Capture and Sequestration, the coal industry’s ’solution’ to the climate crisis, are).

These are not abstract and hard to reach improvements, they are happening every day, mostly in buildings and institution with the available capital and know-how to tap into this incredible resource. Fortunately, there are many young people out there working hard to bridge the gap between these money, energy, and air quality  saving measures and everyday people who don’t traditionally have access to them.

Enter the Let’s Raise A Million (LRAM) project, a campaign which started in Atlanta and is quickly spreading throughout the United States. An ambitious group of Morehouse University students became aware of the sorry fact that coal power plants are often located in poor neighborhoods and vowed to do something about it (armed with a Campus Progress Action Grant!).  Their solution was to plant a ’seed’ in these communities to help them grow economically by distributing compact fluorescent lightbulbs and information about energy conservation.

Their program grew and spread rapidly due to its inspiring success. This summer, over 5,000 lightbulbs and 3,500 water conservation kits were distributed to Atlantan neighborhoods with the help of a city youth job training program. It’s also spreading to other cities; students from the ImprovEarth group at South Carolina State are starting a similar campaign there and plan to make it just as big. Energy efficiency is not a pipe dream, it’s a tangible solution that helps families and businesses save money, reduces the incidence of respiratory diseases and limits the effects of the climate crisis. These ambitious young people throughout the country are doing it because of their passion for justice and need all the support they can get from volunteers and, most importantly, from progressive policy.

What we need is a bold national energy reduction strategy to take aim at everything from building codes to landlord-tenant relationships and changes them to incentivize energy conservation. After eight years of negligence, finally the United States federal government is starting to act, but it isn’t doing enough yet. Despite energy efficiency being (by far) the best part of the American Clean Energy and Security act, many of the key provisions were badly weakened, especially investments in research and development.

McKinsey reports that in order to meet the 23% reduction we need to “craft a comprehensive and innovative approach to unlock [the potential for low-cost energy savings]“. McKinsey offers five steps to help achieve this goal. I’d like to propose my own, partly inspired by theirs:

1. Launch a highly publicized National Strategy for Climate led by Carol Browner , the climate advisor to the President, and Stephen Chu, the Secretary of Energy, which prioritizes energy efficiency.
2. Pass a bold national Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard 20% reductions in energy use by 2020 in line with the McKinsey report (with a round number to ease political messaging).
3. Replace 50 cent fee on every electricity bill earmarked for Carbon Capture and Sequestration research in the American Clean Energy and Security Act with a progressive fee (i.e. 2% of energy bill) tax to fund energy efficiency research and deployment.
4. Give States incentives to decouple utility profits from energy sales as was successfully done in California to boost private sector investments in energy efficiency.

If you are interested in this topic, check out the Alliance to Save Energy, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, and ClimateProgress (analysis of long-term benefit for businesses who invest in energy efficiency).