Many economically attractive opportunities to invest in energy efficiency are forgone because of various market barriers, notably the limited availability of commercial financing for energy efficiency projects. Once a government decides, as a matter of policy, to scale up energy efficiency, it...

Over the 20-year period between 1990 and 2010, strong demo¬graphic and economic growth around the world caused global primary energy consumption to grow at a compound annual rate of 2 percent annually. Even so, falling energy intensity (the amount of energy used to produce a unit of economic...