25x’25

Energy efficiency is a hallmark of the 25x’25 Vision and a report from McKinsey & Company reinforces the benefits of effective energy use in boosting our economy and enhancing our environment. The report, “Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy,” outlines opportunities for consumers, businesses and other institutions to save billions of dollars in energy costs by 2020. According to the report, America could reduce its non-transportation energy usage by 23 percent by 2020 by investing in energy efficiencies.

Energy efficiency is the option of first choice in the 25x’25 Vision, which calls for meeting 25 percent of our nation’s energy needs by 2025 with renewable resources from our farms, ranches and forestlands. In fact, the long-established 25x’25 Action Plan provides a clean energy policy framework that establishes energy efficiency as a primary objective. Combining energy efficiency, which is the cheapest, cleanest and most abundant power option available, with abundant biofuel, biomass, wind energy, solar power, geothermal energy and hydropower resources will achieve a new energy future that will utilize solutions from the land to meet our power and transportation needs and stem climate change energy.

And as EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in reaction to the McKinsey report, “The energy that most effectively cuts costs, protects us from climate change, and reduces our dependence on foreign oil is the energy that’s never used in the first place.”

McKinsey & Company says that with the 20-plus percent reduction in consumption by 2020 with increased energy efficiency, up to 1.1 gigatons of greenhouse gases would be prevented annually, the equivalent of taking the entire U.S. fleet of passenger vehicles and light trucks off the roads.

The research and consulting firm acknowledges that a significant upfront investment must be made. But the return on some $520 billion in investments, plus program costs, is more than doubled, the report says, by the elimination of more than $1.2 trillion in energy waste.

As lawmakers review spending plans for the 2010 fiscal year and onward, they must support efforts such as USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program. REAP provides grants that, among other purposes, fund energy audits and energy efficiency improvements for agricultural producers and rural small businesses. It is incumbent upon our policymakers to take the steps necessary to keep us on the path to a renewable and efficient energy future.

25x'25 Policy/Funding Climate Change, Congress, Efficiency, Emissions, EPA, Farms, USDA