[gavinpc]

So "demand side" means industrial efficiencies? I always thought of it as, you know, less end-usage.

Yes it's a small share of the total, and no I don't believe it's a matter of policy. It's cultural. Whose job do we think it is to "spend within our means" energy-wise? Everyone's? Or is it industry's job to just "make it work" so that we can keep black-boxing power, as we do water.

Example: I was at an airport café this morning and I noticed that the menu was displayed on three big display monitors. They were probably 42-inch screens, all showing the same static image. There were like 6 menu items, all minor variants on a cup of coffee. They were all clearly visible from every possible angle. The same job could have been done undistinguishably well by any single one of them—not to speak of a printed board.

I know, it's an airport for crying out loud. The energy used by those screens is too small to measure. What concerns me is that we (Americans at least) live in a society where someone—I would say thinks this is okay, but really just doesn't think about it at all.

So I completely agree about where our priorities should be, but I think that those levers would be easier to pull if we as a culture had a little more "mechanical sympathy."[0]

[0] http://www.se-radio.net/2014/02/episode-201-martin-thompson-... (Where I first heard of it, anyway.)