In efforts to promote the renewable sector the U.S. Government is investing billions of dollars into areas such as wind and solar. Obama’s stimulus package doubled the funding for renewable technologies as compared to energy efficiency, $40 billion and $20 billion respectively. About half of the $40 billion will go to tax credits, and the remainder will be split among loan guarantees, research, carbon captures, etc. As for energy efficiency, $250 million will go to grants for retrofitting, $300 million for Energy Star Appliance rebates, $4.5 billion for smart-grid projects, and $3.2 billion for energy efficiency grant programs, to name a few.
What do all these numbers mean for Americans? Skeptics believe it shows that instead of encouraging conservation of energy, the allocation of funds is doing the opposite. Whether you agree or not, the point is that we can’t rely on new technologies to give us more energy, the public needs to embrace energy conservation behaviors and methods, what is the point if we can get more energy, yet we don’t bother to conserve any of it?
Given that buildings account for half of the CO2 emissions in the U.S. alon ...