Supply side efficiency: Energy at our fingertips

The European Commission adopted an Energy Efficiency Plan in March 2011 with a target of reducing primary energy consumption by 20% by 2020. The plan identifies energy efficiency as one of the most cost effective ways to enhance security of the energy supply, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and as a key term energy and climate goals. Supply side energy efficiency represented a large, untapped reservoir of opportunity for European society and its energy industry, holding the potential to highly improve the performance of existing power generation facilities and supporting member states to better manage their natural resources, while improving their ability to meet growing power demand. Supply side energy efficiency simply meant using less energy input to produce the same amount of electricity so that a higher percentage of the energy consumed to produce electricity is converted to electricity or usable heat.