The last issue of Scientific American has some very interesting articles concerning energy usage and conservation.
One of the items that came up, and for some reason, surprised me had to do with the "value" of conservation. We have all had it hammered into our heads about how inefficient our power distribution system is (we get something like 10% of the input power to be used for doing things). Pick a number, it is somewhere between 10-20%. That is pretty darned depressing, but it also shows how important conservation can be. Assuming the 10% number for the sake of argument, it becomes apparent that a saving of a kilowatt at the consumption end results in a savings of ten times as much on the consumption end. I think this is an interesting, and usually overlooked, detail.
What it means is that conservation isn't a "little here and a little there." Rather, it a a huge deal because of the multiplier effect created by the inefficiencies of our power distribution system.
