Energy efficiency is a topic that has been around for a long time. If company A and company B both make a TV and company A’s is more efficient resulting in the customer having to pay less to use it the customer will prefer their product. As consumers we can sum up value as what we pay for a product versus its qualities the product has. It would be nice for the consumers and for earth if the cheapest product was the most energy efficient however we know this is not the case. With that being said the trend of consumer products over time is that they become more efficient. For example from 2001 to today refrigerators use 40 percent less energy.
Our current energy crisis means that we are using more and more energy. We are making products that are more energy efficient however we are still using more energy. In order for our energy efficiency to help our energy crisis it must lower our consumption which it has not done. A big factor in this is the consumers need for material things. Although they are buying more energy efficient products they are buying more products. We can also contribute some of the energy to the advancement of electronics. We purchase electronics and a year later we are upgrading. This kind of trend result in large energy consumption by manufacturers making the products we buy. Because of the rise in energy cost we should see a leveling of energy consumption. Eventually cost will be so high that efficiency will become the number one priority. When this happens there will need to be innovation and engineering resulting in much more energy efficient products. As long as we can keep being innovative and engineer energy efficient products eventually we will see a change. Hopefully we will see energy consumption drop however it is possible that we see energy cost drop through innovation and out of the box engineering. If this happens we may shoot ourselves in the foot and cause an even larger energy crisis.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/ba/pba/intensityindicators/total_energy.html
http://greenitinc.com/solar_vs_non_renewable_energy_costs_comparison
Sources:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/ba/pba/intensityindicators/total_energy.html