ABSTRACT
The European Commission, for example, considers it economically viable to leverage efficiency improvements for achieving reductions in energy consumption greater than 20% as compared to the 2020 business-as-usual projections (European Commission, 2005). Energy efficiency makes particular sense for developing countries that are projected to require enormous investments1 in power generation infrastructure to meet their growing energy needs – improving energy efficiency can reduce these investment requirements. Moreover, the net financial impact of the energy-efficiency technologies could be negative, implying that the economic gains from lower energy consumption can potentially offset the costs involved in adopting these technologies (McKinsey, 2009a). Moreover, energy-efficiency improvements, through their reduction of the overall energy demand, ease the strain on renewable-energy deployment efforts that would require substantial investments to materialise at the requisite scales.
