Topic Closed: September 19, 2005 - January 24, 2006
Who should be primarily responsible for ensuring we conserve more energy—governments, businesses, or market forces?
As energy demand continues to rise along with prices, and concerns for energy security, environmental impacts and fossil fuel depletion increase, energy conservation plays an increasingly prominent role in the practices of governments, corporations, consumers and NGOs. But while consensus exists around the need for expanding energy conservation, there is less agreement about how best to increase conservation. Options discussed and debated include the following:
- Governments should play a strong role, through any combination of regulation, tax incentives, voluntary targets, research and education.
- Businesses should aggressively reduce the energy consumed by their operations, and should shape the market for more energy-efficient products, ahead of the market, because it is the right thing to do, and has long-term business benefits.
- Consumers should demonstrate that conservation is a priority, through changes in purchasing and energy use habits. Then business will develop new, more efficient products and a stronger focus on conservation.
- Nonprofit organizations should encourage energy conservation through education and membership efforts.
- Market forces should be allowed to drive change at an efficient pace and direction, without distortion from governments, corporate responsibility programs, consumers or NGOs. Therefore, businesses should pursue energy conservation in their operations as long as such efforts make financial sense, and should develop more energy-efficient products if and when there is market demand.
Who should take the lead? And how?
- Should government pursue policies to encourage energy conservation? And if so, which ones?
- Does it make sense for businesses to invest in conservation, ahead of either the consumer market or the economics of energy?
- What role should social or environmental activists play? Are campaigns that include boycotts or other anti-company actions fair and effective?
- Should consumers be the ultimate arbiter of what products are brought to market?
- Should we leave the pace and direction of conservation to market forces, prompting businesses and consumers to pursue conservation apace with the economics of energy?
- Do market forces adequately reflect the environmental and social costs, which many have argued are externalized, and therefore not fully factored into the economic equation?