Decoupling Climate Change and Energy Efficiency

Energy efficiency is widely accepted as a tool to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. And reductions in GHG emissions are necessary in order to control the effects of climate change resulting from increased GHG emissions. With these statements the assemblage that explains the need for energy efficiency is supposedly complete. But that simply is not the case. Energy efficiency is not only pursued for reasons other than GHG emission reductions but is often pursed by actors that actually reject the entire notion of human-caused climate change and/or reject GHG emissions as a cause for climate change. In this paper I explore how and why actual actors decouple energy efficiency from climate change and examine some of the factors actors include in their decisions to pursue energy efficiency that are not related to climate change.