With rolling blackouts in California and increasing fuel costs, the US is faced with the task of developing an energy policy that can provide our needs in a reliable and sustainable way. The Bush Administration unveiled its National Energy Policy last month, a document that has been heavily scrutinized and critiqued for its over-reliance on supply-side solutions. With the Democratic Party now controlling the Senate, the debate regarding the proper energy vision for America will only intensify in coming months.

The path we choose to follow will have significant public health implications. If we allow our energy consumption to grow unabated, our ecological footprint will continue to grow as environmentally benign solutions rapidly dwindle. Conserving energy can literally save lives. For example, reducing our electricity use cuts emissions from power plants, which contribute a quarter of the nitrogen dioxide and two-thirds of the sulfur dioxide that gets into our air. The air pollution from these emissions (including fine particles and ozone) leads to increased risk of death, hospital admissions, emergency room visits, and asthma attacks. A cut in electricity use also reduces health risks associated with coal mining, transportation of fuels, disposal of waste products, greenhouse gas emissions, and other processes in the fuel cycle.

Energy conservation and efficiency should not be dismissed as "personal virtues", but should rather be centerpieces of US energy policy. The question is not how to extract more energy resources from our land, but whether we can extract more value from the energy we have. Across our economy, there is a compelling public health and economic rationale for energy conservation efforts.

We build more than a million new homes every year in the US: in our walls, attics and basements, there are substantial energy savings to extract. Many new homes are not nearly as energy efficient as is technically and economically feasible–and an estimated 60 to 70 percent of existing homes have inadequate insulation or none at all. If every home built in the next 10 years were required to meet proposed insulation levels, we would have saved more than 300 trillion BTU by 2010, equivalent to the annual heat input of a dozen 500 megawatt power plants. Higher-performance windows and other simple measures would add to these savings. Insulation retrofits alone would save residents $5 billion annually, allowing homeowners and renters to keep their money to spend as they choose, rather than giving it to the energy companies.

Energy efficiency benefits are not limited to the home. For example, the average fuel economy of new passenger vehicles is at the lowest level in 20 years. Many of the most popular SUVs get a paltry and unconscionable 15 miles per gallon or less. If new passenger vehicles could reach the average fuel economy of model year 1988, new car buyers would save $1 billion per year.

Across Harvard, energy conservation efforts in recent years have shown a return on investment of 34 percent, far outpacing most conventional investment vehicles. The Greening the Crimson Initiative has been authorized by the university to manage a $5 million dollar, zero-interest Environmental Loan Fund to encourage even more energy, water, and material use reductions. At HSPH, recently purchased low-wattage computer monitors reduced electricity consumption in the computer labs and paid for themselves in less than two years. Proposed ventilation projects at the school would result in an immediate 15 percent drop in energy consumption with minimal expenditures. These efforts coupled with advanced technologies to be tested at Landmark Center demonstrate that substantial energy savings (and lower bills) are available in commercial buildings.

Our nation is at a crossroads where we face important decisions about our energy course. No one strategy can provide the entire solution. The Bush Administration’s proposed budget reduces the Department of Energy’s research budget for renewable energy by 37 percent and energy conservation by 23 percent. This will, in the long run, limit our nation’s ability to provide adequate energy services without endangering our health, our ecosystems, and our global climate. Responsible leadership would aggressively promote policies to encourage public and private investment that can secure long-term benefits for the economy, the environment, and the health of Americans–and not let the energy we have leak out the window.