Power Plays: Part I
energy efficiency, growing an economy, climate change, buying time, solar gains
Power Plays Part II: highjacking the narrative, intentional ignorance, grooming LLMs, politicizing AI
Power Plays Part III: solar wins the AI race, footing the fossil bill, hat tricks and Sun Day
MORE FOR LESS
Almost eight years ago, during the first Trump administration, I wrote a creative brief to rebrand energy efficiency, the unsung, mostly unseen hero of the energy transition. “It is cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel,” notes Amory Lovins, co-founder of energy consultancy RMI. That made efficiency an existential threat to the fossil fuel industry, which made it a target for a President in the pocket of the fossil fuel lobby.
So the administration moved to shut down Energy Star, a wildly popular federal program encouraging consumers to make smarter choice by providing information on the efficiency of appliances. Washers, driers, air-conditioners, fans, heaters, refrigerators, stoves, vacuum cleaners, televisions, computers, doorbells, microwaves, lighting—pretty much anything with a plug or a battery is Energy Star’s beat. Manufacturers liked the program because an Energy Star sticker on a product made it an easier sell.
Since program’s founding in 1992, it has saved Americans hundreds of billions of dollars through lower utility bills, which is quite a good deal for a program with an annual budget of $35 million. These savings go straight into the pockets of energy consumers. For businesses, lower operational costs improve the bottom line, which, in turn, can help fatten up investor dividends. Residential ratepayers have more money to spend. In an economy 70% dependent on consumer spending, that’s a big deal.
Energy efficiency is an economic stimulus that’s a little like a tax break, only better. Financial benefits aren’t a one time hit, but continue month after month for as long as appliance—or energy efficient building or car—is in use. When energy prices are high, there is a commensurate increase in those savings, too. So energy efficiency also functions as a built-in hedge against inflation.
Over the last three decades, US GDP ballooned four-fold ($6.5 trillion to $29 trillion) in part thanks to a growing number of increasingly efficient appliances, buildings, cars and trucks. At the same time, the population grew by a third (257 million to 340 million) and median income increased from $31,500 (~$72,000 in 2025 dollars) to $77,000 dollars.
That is a picture of enduring, expansive prosperity.
And all this good news was happening while the digital revolution uncorked a gusher of new products to plug in and charge up: desktop computers, printers, laptops, smart phones, and televisions of every imaginable shape and size.
BUYING TIME
Yet the most significant benefit of energy efficiency is not measured in money, but in time.
If not for energy efficiency—coupled with gains in solar, wind and energy storage—we wouldn’t be looking at record atmospheric carbon levels hovering around 425 parts per million, or global temperatures over the last ten years the highest on record. The numbers would be worse. Much worse.
Since 1992, Energy Star-rated products have collectively kept an estimated four gigatons of CO2 out the atmosphere. To put that in perspective, Climeworks, the world’s largest Direct Air Capture (DAC) company, which has raised $1 billion from investors, so far has removed only 1,100 tons of CO2—well shy of its one megaton per year goal promised by 2030. A gigaton is 1,000 megatons, so even that goal is a small fraction of the amount of carbon kept out the atmosphere by efficiency every year. What if $1 billion had been invested in energy efficiency instead?
Remove the efficiency gains over the last several decades from the equation and today’s atmospheric CO2 levels could easily have soared to 500 ppm. Perhaps higher.
The plenty sobering news in the 2024 World Meteorological Organization State of the Global Climate report would read like the good old days. Instead of being perched on the terrifying brink of runaway climate change, we would now be well over the climate cliff. Mountain glaciers would long ago have melted into memory. Water that didn’t end up in the oceans, contributing to sea-level rise, would have turned into water vapor, a potent greenhouse gas, which would have been kept aloft by an atmospheric sponge able to hold 7% more moisture with each 1°C increase in temperature. Meltwater from atrophied ice caps would have raised sea levels even higher.
Today, Greenland loses an astonishing 30 million tons of ice per hour. Without energy efficiency slowing down the rate of climate change, how much ice would be left to melt?
Floods. Droughts. Wildfires. Heatwaves. Cold snaps triggered by an increasingly wobbly polar vortex. Today’s extreme weather is nothing compared with what it could have been. In that overheated version of the future, insect-borne and fungal pathogens thrive, while food crops wither and die. Tipping points not only tip, they collide, merge and amplify.
Thanks in part to energy efficiency—along solar, wind, batteries, and also stunning strides in materials science—there is still a sliver of time to avoid this fire and brimstone destiny. That is if the second coming of Trump, with the support of self-styled “climate realists,” doesn’t squander the opportunity.
The Energy Star program is in the administration’s cross-hairs once again. That’s not surprising. What is surprising is the emergence of a bipartisan pairing of environmentalists and industry groups lobbying for the program’s survival. Energy efficiency is still an existential threat to those pushing coal, gas and oil, but it makes everyone else richer.
(link here to watch the full presentation: “Why ‘climate realists’ are dead wrong”)
Continue to Power Plays Part II: highjacking the narrative, intentional ignorance, grooming LLMs, politicizing AI