Increasing efficiency could cut global power usage by over 70%

A new study from the University of Cambridge found that if we were to make existing technologies more efficient, it could reduce global power usage by over 70%.

Julian Allwood and colleagues analysed several buildings, vehicles and industry and after applying the ‘best practice’ efficiency changes to them, they found that introducing such changes could save 73% of global energy use.

Some of these little changes include using saucepan lids when cooking on the stove top, eliminating hot-water tanks and reducing the set temperature of washing machines and dishwashers. Another solution could be limiting the weight of cars in transportation to 300 kilograms.

"Our 300-kilogram cars would be at risk in collisions at present if they met heavier vehicles coming the other way,” New Scientist quoted him as saying.

But increasingly tough emissions standards for passenger cars will lead to reduced vehicle weights, he added.

Although most of the assumptions that the team made are conservative, according to Nick Eyre, leader of the Lower Carbon Futures group at the University of Oxford, he agreed that the conclusions are "powerful".

"The emphasis on the importance of 'passive systems' strongly implies that conventional ideas about the energy system and energy policy need to be broadened to include the way energy is used, not just the way it is supplied and converted," said.

The study appears in Environmental Science and Technology.