Energy efficiency concepts and applications

Energy Efficiency

Energy conservation has become such a hackneyed topic that it has completely lost its shock and awe effect. Government's numerous energy conservation programs were certainly developed with best interests of the public at heart but over the years, their inability to penetrate public's consciousness have turned them into fatuous exercises. However energy conservation is not something that can be easily overlooked because lack of efficiency in the utilization of energy is costing the country dearly.

We must first understand what is meant by energy efficiency. Energy comes from host of sources- some of which are more vulnerable to depletion than others. In order to protect these sources from complete dissipation, we need to lessen our dependence on them and thus turn to more enduring sources of energy. In layman terms, there are renewable and non-renewable sources of energy. As their tags indicate, renewable sources are those that are continuously being replenished such as energy coming from sun and wind. On the other hand, non-replenished sources include coal, which is vulnerable to depletion because coal takes years to form and its consumption is higher than its production.

Our country's biggest challenge is the prodigious use of energy, which has only increased, in the last decade with greater technology and heavier dependence on foreign sources of energy. In the last decade, Americans used 17% more energy than they did in the decade before. By the year 2020, it is likely to grow by 32%, which will only further increase our dependence on quick but rapidly depleting sources of energy including foreign sources. At home, production of energy has increased by 2.3%, which is significantly less than what is being demanded.

Solar energy that causes less pollution than coal-based energy is not used as often as we should because it cannot be created with as much ease as the latter source. In order to translate solar power into electricity, greater power generation prowess is to be utilized. This is what has led to decreased use of renewable sources. Everywhere we see, the energy that we are consuming is coming from sources other than sun and wind. Interestingly while rapidly vanishing reservoirs of energy are easier to produce, they cannot be replenished with ease and the exact opposite is true for renewable sources.