NRDC Expert Blog

This is part of a series of blogs on NRDC’s new report, “America’s Clean Energy Frontier: The Pathway to a Safer Climate Future”

What role can energy efficiency play in meeting the U.S. share of global climate goals? This question has been asked in many forums and models, and the answers are always consistent: smarter use of energy in buildings, transportation, and industry is the single largest, cheapest and lowest impact pathway to net-zero climate pollution. But a new NRDC report highlights just how important its role is to this clean energy transition.

New, comprehensive modeling by NRDC and Energy + Environmental Economics (E3) outlines a cost-effective pathway to a climate-safe future that relies on today’s proven clean energy solutions. The big news here is not just that we can do it. It’s how. The report breaks new ground by combining more aggressive—but achievable—assumptions on the potential to scale up energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean, efficient electrification, with complex energy system modeling tools that the most sophisticated Department of Energy and private sector analyses employ.

A huge source of water waste lies buried in yards across California and the U.S.: the pop-up sprinklers many homeowners use to irrigate turf grass.