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US learned societies are the latest to join the long list of those calling for the country’s authorities to take action on energy efficiency.

In a recent report, the American Physical Society (APS), which represents over 46,000 physicists in academia and industry, says that improving energy efficiency is an easy and inexpensive way for the US to reduce oil imports and carbon emissions.

Energy Future: Think Efficiency concludes that existing technologies could increase the efficiency of vehicles and buildings in the US, but requires federal policies to drive their adoption.

According to the report, it should be possible to achieve 50 mpg for light-duty vehicles by 2030. However, it is more damning of future ‘alternative’ transport options.

Plug-in and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will not replace traditional vehicles in the near future, says the report, and will require major scientific and technological breakthroughs before they can be widely adopted.

To address the shortfall, the APS is calling for federal agencies to invest more in battery research for convention hybrids, plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles.

However, effective energy efficiency technologies already exist for buildings, says the report. Zero energy homes could also be possible by 2020 and commercial premises by 2030.

To make this possible, the society is also calling for more to be spent on research and development of next-generation building technologies and training scientists in this area.

The report slams programmes such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for not giving sufficient weight to energy efficiency and is calling on the federal government to adopt policies that will be more effective in encouraging consumers to invest in energy-efficient technologies and products.

“The American people need leadership from the Congress and the next president on this issue,” says Nobel Laureate Burton Richter, chair of the study panel and director emeritus of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

The APS report coincides with a petition from over 70 other scientific, academic and industry organisations in the US to set up a strong, stable and multidisciplinary funding programme for basic energy research.

The effort needs to increase financial support, including the America COMPETES Act, and bring together the Departments of Energy, Defense, Agriculture and Transportation with the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The America COMPETES Act – Creating Opportunities To Meaningfully Promote Excellence In Technology, Education, And Science – was brought in by President George W. Bush to strength scientific education and research in the US and includes proposals to double the support for basic research in the alternative energy sources.

As well as investing in scientific research, the effort also needs to undertake social and economic research to understand which energy technologies will be most effective and easily adopted. There will also be the need to undertake high-risk transformational research, says the petition.

“Development of renewable energy sources and energy-efficient lighting are important pieces of the solution to the world’s energy crisis,” says Eugene Arthurs, CEO of SPIE, which represents the optics and photonics sector. “We must realize the potential of this research, which is the key to the enormous challenge of replacing the fossil-fuel-based global energy infrastructure.

For further information:
www.aps.org/energyefficiencyreport/
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070809-6.html
spie.org/documents/Newsroom/PDF/Petition-to-next-President.pdf
SPIE.org