[分享]Curbing the growth of global energy demand

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以下文章摘自麦肯锡季刊

Curbing the growth of global energy demand
The opportunities for improvement are huge, but market forces alone won’t realize them.

The options available to mitigate the world’s energy problems
disconcert policy makers and executives alike. Securing new supplies
of fossil fuels is difficult and often presents geopolitical risks; new
technologies associated with alternative sources of energy, although
attractive, involve significant levels of uncertainty and could have
unintended consequences.1 Meanwhile, the prospect of reducing
energy demand evokes fears that the consumer’s convenience and
comfort would be compromised—an unattractive proposition
anywhere and an unacceptable one in the developing world, where
globalization and rapid economic growth, fueled by increased energy
consumption, are improving the prospects of hundreds of millions of
people.
Yet McKinsey research shows that the growth of worldwide energy
demand can be cut in half or more over the next 15 years, without
reducing the benefits that energy’s end users enjoy—and while
supporting economic growth. The key is a concerted global effort to
boost energy productivity (the amount of output achieved from each
unit of energy consumed).2 (A joint research project conducted by the
McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) and McKinsey’s global energy and
materials practice. For the full report underlying this article, see
Curbing Global Energy Demand Growth: The Energy Productivity
Opportunity, May 2007, available free of charge online.)
The exhibits that follow examine these opportunities by focusing on four sectors that represent
98 percent of end-use demand for energy around the world. Capturing the full range of these
opportunities would improve global energy productivity by 135 quadrillion British thermal units
(QBTUs), saving the equivalent of 64 million barrels of oil a day—almost 150 percent of the
energy the United States consumes now. What’s more, an intensive focus on improving energy
productivity would spur new markets for demand-side innovation and thus generate important
business opportunities for manufacturers, utilities, and other companies.
Yet market forces alone will not produce such outcomes. The obstacles that thwart improvements
in energy productivity include information gaps, market-distorting subsidies, an inadequate
financing infrastructure, and misaligned incentives. To overcome such barriers, policy makers
must terminate distorted policies, make the price and use of energy more transparent, create
new market-clearing and financing mechanisms, and selectively implement demand-side energy
policies (such as new building codes and appliance standards) while also encouraging demandside
innovation by companies. Although these actions will be difficult politically, the rewards
would be profound. Capturing the opportunities we have identified would not only cut the growth
of energy demand dramatically but also be among the most economically attractive ways to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.