Energy Efficiency Market Report 2014 (Executive Summary)

Overview

The Energy Efficiency Market Report is the International Energy Agency's annual attempt to treat efficiency as a market with measurable investment, savings, and finance flows rather than a policy afterthought. This library entry holds the seven-page executive summary of the 2014 edition (pages 16 to 22 of the full report), which answers three questions: how large is global spending on efficiency, how much energy has it actually displaced in IEA countries, and where is the market growing fastest.

Key Findings

• Worldwide investment in energy efficiency reached an estimated $310 billion to $360 billion in 2012, more than supply-side investment in renewable electricity or in coal, oil, and gas generation, and about half of upstream oil and gas investment.
• Efficiency improvements made since the 1970s in 11 IEA member countries avoided 1,337 million tonnes of oil equivalent (56 exajoules) in 2011, equal to 59% of those countries' total final consumption and larger than their entire oil supply that year. Valued at an average world energy price, that avoided energy was worth about $743 billion.
• Extending the analysis to 18 countries, the IEA found that without efficiency gains since 2001, energy use in 2011 would have been 218 Mtoe higher; cumulative savings over the decade came to 1,731 Mtoe.
• Efficiency delivered its largest percentage gains in the residential sector, driven by space heating, water heating, lighting, and appliances, even as populations grew and homes got larger.
• Energy prices rose 11% to 52% across the countries studied between 2001 and 2011, yet efficiency kept the share of household income spent on energy from climbing at the same rate.
• Vehicle fuel-economy standards covered 70% of the global light-duty market, and efficiency finance had moved into the mainstream through green banks, green bonds, and a U.S. energy-service-company market worth more than $5 billion a year.
• Country snapshots include Canada's 2011 model building energy code, projected to improve commercial building efficiency by 25%, and Japan's LED market, which reached $5.2 billion and 30% of bulbs sold in 2013.

Why It Matters for Daylighting

The IEA's "first fuel" framing is the macro case for every daylighting project: the energy a building never draws is cheaper and cleaner than any supply it could buy. Lighting is one of the four residential end uses the report credits for the largest efficiency gains, and in commercial and industrial buildings it is a still bigger share of the load. Toplighting through prismatic skylights attacks that load directly, and the report's evidence that stronger building codes, such as Canada's model code, drive measurable market growth explains why U.S. energy codes have steadily added daylighting and skylight requirements for large single-story spaces.

For owners of warehouses and manufacturing plants the takeaway is that efficiency has become an investable asset class with dedicated finance vehicles, which broadens the options for funding skylight and controls retrofits beyond the capital budget.

About the Source

The International Energy Agency is the Paris-based intergovernmental energy body established within the OECD framework in 1974; its market reports are standard references for governments and investors. The 2014 edition was published in October 2014 under OECD/IEA copyright, and the library holds only the executive summary (seven pages). The complete report, including the transport, finance, and country chapters, is available from the IEA's website.