Energy efficiency gains trump renewables—Davos

The importance of energy efficiency is overlooked but is crucial to tackling climate change, according to Luxembourg’s energy minister

The global focus on renewables, hydrogen, electric vehicles and other enablers of the energy transition has led to the importance of energy efficiency being overlooked, Luxembourg’s minister for energy and spatial planning told delegates at Davos Energy Week. In a keynote speech on Thursday, Claude Turmes said energy efficiency “has to be our number one policy” in the age of climate change. “Renewable energy of course gets much more media attention and is much more sexy… whereas energy efficiency's problem is that it is not really visible. But we have to make it visible in the IEA’s scenarios and all other climate net-zero scenarios. “Energy efficiency is always the biggest share of everythi