Energy conservation in the United States
The 1980s saw dramatic improvements in fuel economy, mostly the result of reductions in vehicle size and weight which originated in the late 1970s, along with the transition to front wheel drive.
Many urban areas offer subsidized public transportation to reduce commuting traffic, and encourage carpooling by providing designated high-occupancy vehicle lanes and lower tolls for cars with multiple riders.
Beyond these minimum standards, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awards the Energy Star designation to appliances that exceed industry efficiency averages by an EPA-specified percentage.
[citation needed] Even lower cost improvements include weatherization, which is frequently subsidized by utilities or state and federal tax credits, as are programmable thermostats.
Milder regions such as the Southern U.S. and Pacific Coast of the US need far less energy for space conditioning than New York City or Chicago.
For instance a 50-inch LCD television, average on-time of six hours a day, may draw 300 watts less than a similarly sized plasma system.
In most residences no single appliance dominates, and any conservation efforts must be directed to numerous areas in order to achieve substantial energy savings.
The commercial sector consists of retail stores, offices (business and government), restaurants, schools and other workplaces.
[citation needed] Commercial buildings can greatly increase energy efficiency by thoughtful design, with today's[when?]
[13] Commercial buildings often have professional management, allowing centralized control and coordination of energy conservation efforts.
As a result, fluorescent lighting (about four times as efficient as incandescent) is the standard for most commercial space, although it may produce certain adverse health effects.
As an example one large company in Northern California boasted that it was confident its state of the art system had optimized space heating.
A more careful analysis by Lumina Technologies showed the system had been given programming instructions to maintain constant 24‑hour temperatures in the entire building complex.
This instruction caused the injection of nighttime heat into vacant buildings when the daytime summer temperatures would often exceed 90 °F (32 °C).
Solar heat loading through standard window designs usually leads to high demand for air conditioning in summer months.
Controllers that automatically vary the speeds of fans, pumps, and compressors have radically improved part-load performance of those devices.
[18] The industrial sector represents all production and processing of goods, including manufacturing, construction, farming, water management and mining.
Increasing costs have forced energy-intensive industries to make substantial efficiency improvements in the past 30 years.
In these high-temperature applications, the consumption of primary energy and the associated CO2 emissions can be reduced by up to 50% compared with old-fashioned industrial installations.
While this is partly due to conservation efforts, it is also a reflection of the growing trend for U.S. companies to move manufacturing operations overseas.
implemented, the Department of Energy enforces test procedures and minimum standards for more than 50 products covering residential, commercial and industrial, lighting, and plumbing applications.
In February 2023 the United States Department of Energy proposed a set of new energy efficiency standards that, if implemented, will save to users of different electric machines in the United States around 3,500,000,000$ per year and will reduce by the year 2050 carbon emissions by the same amount as emitted by 29,000,000 houses.
