ENERGY DEMAND MANAGEMENT AND CONSERVATION

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses energy demand management and conservation. Conservation issues unique to developing countries arise in the case of households that depend on traditional fuel resources, such as firewood, charcoal, and dung. These often employ primitive cooking techniques, such as open fires that are highly inefficient, using only about 5% of the inherent heat energy of the fuel. Heavy population pressures, dwindling firewood resources resulting in sharply increased costs of fuelwood gathering, increased soil erosion, reduced availability of crop residues from new short-term, high-yield crop varieties, combines to make the foremost and serious energy problems in the majority of developing countries. The technical efficiency of energy use is usually defined in terms of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The first law efficiency measures the relationship between total energy inputs and useful energy outputs. The second law efficiency relates to a more subtle concept, one that defines the optimal efficiency as the minimum amount of thermodynamic differential needed to complete a given task. Energy balance analysis provides a convenient framework for determining the first law efficiencies from primary energy source to final end use and, therefore, may be used as one criterion to analyze the efficiencies of different energy delivery systems.