Energy Saving and Energy Efficiency: an Unsustainable Confusion

It was in September 1974 when, in order to tackle the oil crisis of 1973, the European Council began to deal with the energy issue. In the almost forty years which separate these first phases of the energy policy from the present energy legislative framework, the efforts of the European Union to address one of the most urgent challenges, namely a sustainable use of energy, have progressively increased. In particular, the European Union has demonstrated a growing attention to the rationalisation of energy uses. However, in spite of this undeniable effort, it may be noted that the European Union progressively moved away from a sustainable use of energy by assimilating the two main concepts involved in the rationalisation of energy uses, namely “energy saving” and “energy efficiency”. In fact these concepts, once distinct, have gradually turned to be used interchangeably as synonyms and energy saving has been progressively merged into energy efficiency. The main stages leading to the gradual confusion between the two concepts, as well as the reasons and the possible consequences of such a trend likely to adversely affect the development of an effective sustainable energy legislation, will be investigated in the attempt to demonstrate that currently energy saving and energy efficiency are entangled in a state of “unsustainable confusion”. Moreover, a possible way out from such an unsustainable confusion will be proposed.