According to Lawrence Livermore National Lab, energy use in the USA declined in 2008:
The estimated U.S. energy use in 2008 equaled 99.2 quadrillion BTUs (“quads”), down from 101.5 quadrillion BTUs in 2007.... Of the 99.2 quads consumed, only 42.15 ended up as energy services.
That's a gross efficiency of 42.49%. We waste more energy than we use. Tell me again why we shouldn't be concentrating our efforts on energy efficiency and resource conservation?
Americans used more solar, nuclear, biomass and wind energy in 2008 than they did in 2007... The nation used less coal and petroleum during the same time frame and only slightly increased its natural gas consumption. Geothermal energy use remained the same.
Energy use in the industrial and transportation sectors declined by 1.17 and 0.9 quads respectively, while commercial and residential use slightly climbed. The drop in transportation and industrial use — which are both heavily dependent on petroleum — can be attributed to a spike in oil prices in summer 2008.
Source: https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/...
The priorities I see include:
weatherization barnraisings - you can learn how to do your own with the Home Energy Efficiency Team manual at http://www.heetma.com/... (pdf alert) and I'd like to see a weatherization barnraising on the White House to help popularize the concept
This Old Extreme White House Makeover;
supporting the new energy efficiency building codes in the Waxman-Markey bill
Building Codes to Save More Emissions Than 100 Nukes?;
and new regulations to speed the development of industrial and commercial cogeneration A Zero Cost Solution to Energy and Climate Change.
Meanwhile, on the international front:
In an interview with The Independent, Dr [Fatih] Birol [chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA)] said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.
But the first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an "oil crunch" within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession, he said.
The IEA estimates that the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline it had estimated in 2007, which it now acknowledges to be wrong.
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/...
Looks like another spur towards efficiency to me.