[hansel]

This seems like the standard gloom and doom article that is easy for journalists to publish for an audience looking for an enemy to hate on.

Energy efficiency and end-user economic efficiency can be separated. The simplest way would be to tax the fuels and use those funds to subsidize the financing or purchase of efficient equipment.

The article is stretching arguments too far. The savings of money do not necessarily get applied to more energy intensive purchases. They have no data to back their argument up. Those savings could be applied to renewable energy investments...then electricity is almost free and not scarce/finite.