This report employs energy services analysis (ESA) to illustrate how alternative ways of satisfying human wants and needs can reduce energy consumption and associated emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). We define ESA as an analytical approach that investigates opportunities for reducing energy use by adopting alternative means of satisfying human wants and needs. This focus on satisfying wants and needs contrasts with other approaches that analyze means to reduce energy consumption through technological or behavioral changes but retain existing patterns of consumption of goods or services.

This report illustrates the ESA approach with two case studies: (1) providing print news...

Energy services has long been defined as the ultimate uses for which energy is consumed (Reister and Devine, 1981). The demand for energy services is a derived demand: People do not use energy for its own sake but as an input to generate goods or services consumed to satisfy human wants and needs. ESA is therefore a framework to study and ideally reduce energy consumption based on the provision of an end-use service rather than by energy sectors.

Although the concept of ESA has been discussed and applied for the past several decades, the term itself has not entered widespread...

In this chapter, we use ESA to analyze possibilities for reducing energy consumption and GHG emissions by delivering the written daily news through means other than newspapers. Using a conventional approach, we would investigate this problem by exploring potential technological solutions for reducing the energy used to print and distribute newspapers. The exploration would focus on reducing energy consumption in harvesting pulpwood, making paper, printing, and distribution. Using ESA, we explore an alternative means of providing written news: electronic delivery. To investigate potential reductions in energy use and GHG emissions, we compare this alternative approach of delivering news with providing...

Since the introduction of affordable, mass-produced automobiles, cars have provided Americans with a form of mobility that has transformed where people live and work and how they go about their daily lives. The mobility that automobiles provide is, like energy, a derived demand, driven by the wide variety of wants and needs it helps satisfy. As modern societies are currently structured, mobility is needed to buy groceries (subsistence), attend school and religious institutions (understanding, spirituality, participation), or take a vacation (leisure), to use some of the categories listed by Costanza et al. (2007).

In the United States, mobility is provided...

In the previous two chapters, we used ESA to estimate potential reductions in energy use and GHG emissions from delivering news using e-readers rather than newspapers and from providing mobility through vehicle sharing rather than owning private motor vehicles. This chapter presents several brief examples of other ways of fulfilling the needs laid out by Costanza et al. (2007) (e.g., subsistence, security, spirituality). For each example, we identify the need, describe the current approach to satisfying the need, discuss one or more alternative approaches to satisfying the need, and discuss the potential benefits in terms of reductions in energy use...

We conclude with two observations about the utility of ESA as a framework for seeking unconventional ways to reduce energy use and GHG emissions. Table 6.1 summarizes the differences in per capita and aggregate decreases for both of our examples, as well as our assumptions about the diffusion of the alternative way of providing the service.

The first observation is that there are large differences in emission reductions depending whether the reduction is measured as per capita or aggregate, and as percentage or absolute. For the delivery of written news, the percentage reduction estimated in this summary is as much...