Energy Efficiency and Energy Conservation: Policies, Programmes and Their Effectiveness

This paper examines energy conservation and energy efficiency policies and programmes, mainly in the UK but also in Denmark and the Netherlands. It explores the theoretical and practical differences between conservation and energy efficiency and shows how, particularly in the household sector, energy demand continued to increase despite a range of policies to improve energy efficiency. Energy efficiency's ability to deliver energy and CO 2 savings may be significantly counter-balanced in the short term by trends towards, greater use of appliances and increasing comfort standards. Over the medium and longer term energy efficiency should prove much more beneficial as saturation is reached for many energy services. However without action to raise energy prices (e.g. through taxation) the potentially beneficial effects of energy efficiency programmes may be limited.