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| The Scope of the Energy Finder Energy Efficiency The Energy Finder helps you understand your opportunities for energy efficiency primarily in the residential sector and the commercial sector (under which government functions are subsumed). We defined the scope of the Energy Finder as such for several reasons.  First, we wanted to help community leaders understand their best bets for energy efficiency projects and programs. It is relatively straightforward to gather data on and generate reasonable estimates for potential savings in the residential, commercial, and municipal sectors. In addition, these are the areas for which it makes the most sense to develop an energy management strategy with a consistent set of measures that can be applied across the entire sector.
It is far more difficult to estimate energy consumption and potential savings in a community's industrial sector because of the wide range of industrial activities and often highly situation-specific energy solutions within each industry. Industrial energy efficiency is better handled by individual analyses of each activity and its associated energy uses. We decided to exclude the transportation sector from the Energy Finder analysis partly because many transportation energy measures (e.g. raising fuel federal efficiency standards and removing oil subsidies) are beyond the ability of any one community to implement. The areas where communities can have an impact are largely dependent on community design, whether sprawling and reliant on personal autos, or denser and pedestrian-friendly with a robust public transportation system. There are already a number of tools that guide communities to reducing transportation energy use through smart planning. See for example PLACE3S, CommunityViz, and QUEST. In addition, the Place Matters website (www.placematters.org) contains information on dozens more tools for civic engagement, community design, and decision-making. In summary, by focusing on potential energy savings in the commercial, residential, and municipal sectors, community leaders can get started with programs that will reap lasting local benefits, and generate momentum for tackling the more complex and potentially long-term energy solutions for the transportation and industrial sectors. Renewable Energy The Energy Finder emphasizes energy efficiency as the primary strategy for increasing local wealth and strengthening the economy. A good community energy plan will aim to "plug the leaks" in the community energy bucket with energy efficiency programs before filling that bucket with additional energy to meet demand. When it does become necessary to increase the energy supply, or if a community wants to replace polluting energy sources, leaders can consider developing their own local renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and hydropower. |