The Potential for Industrial Energy Conservation in California

Abstract

The industrial energy conservation scenarios developed in this study show the combined effect on energy consumption of implementing a number of conservation measures. The scenarios include assumptions about economic, demographic and behavioral, and technological variables such as population, industrial growth, and conservation implementation levels. The basic approach for the conservation scenario construction is to quantify base year (1974) per capita energy consumption by industrial subsector, reduce per capita consumption by the estimated conservation potential in the appropriate year, and extrapolate by industrial and population growth. The scenario projects significant reductions in energy consumption. The estimated savings of 2.7 × 1015 BTU (2.9 × 1018 Joules) in 2020 is approximately 30% less than the estimated energy consumption without conservation. Although the scenario was calculated for California industry, the estimates of individual conservation potentials are applicable to other regions of the United States.