We have to do something major about its inefficiencies. The problem of energy inefficiencies can be attributed to transportation (27 percent), industry (25 percent) and buildings (48 percent). This breakdown was calculated and published in 2003 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

I was told about this by GP Yeh of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He says the only way for the U.S. to survive is to keep pushing forward in technology. While I had a chance to recently talk with him on several subjects, the most important to him was the focus on getting buildings to be more energy efficient.

Yeh is a world-renowned scientist and physicist who has been at Fermi for more than 20 years. In his tenure, he has made many contributions with the most significant being the discovery of the top quark, which is a particle that is smaller than the atom.

Fermi is the location of the Tevatron, which is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. This accelerator is used to study the smallest elements of energy that make up atoms, protons and neutrons. It is used to determine the smallest particles of the universe and understand their forces and interactions with each another.

Yeh says many energy companies (such as BP) are looking at renewable fuels. They are funding research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at other universities. Aside from corn, the research includes looking at making renewable fuels from grass, wood and other alternatives.

That said, how do we focus on everyday energy conservation without disrupting our lifestyle? It can be done. How many of you are driving gas-guzzling SUVs? With the Chicago Auto Show happening this week, maybe we shouldn’t be talking about buying smaller and more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Unfortunately, many people who are looking at buying cars are still not looking at fuel efficiency as much as they are looking for luxury and performance. They’re more interested in MP3 connectors and having enough cup holders. I have heard that the next big thing will be a new diesel engine for SUVs.

While hybrids may be great for some people, I think a really efficient, powerful and clean-burning diesel coupled with biofuels would be a better choice for SUVs and would probably be much more acceptable in the marketplace. We’ll see what happens as consumers make their choices.

In the meantime, let’s try to understand and adopt some everyday conservation practices that don’t need to be drastic changes to our behavioral patterns.

Cutting Back Your Energy Consumption

How many of you have fluorescent lights in your lamps instead of incandescent lights?

Putting in a 15-watt bulb where a 60-watt bulb used to be could save a lot of money if you do it throughout your home. Just changing the lights to a new bulb can cut back 75 percent of your lighting energy consumption. You can do this without ever feeling an ounce of sacrifice.

If you are living in a high-rise condominium building and are paying some hefty association fees, demand that the building at least switch to fluorescent lights in all the common areas. This does make a difference in energy costs and I have seen this done in a few buildings.

I recently looked at association fees at many of the downtown residential towers and was shocked to see the monthly assessments being charged. For some condos, the monthly assessment is well in excess of $1,000 a month. I wonder how much electricity is wasted in many of these downtown buildings.

Let’s say you have a 30-story building with 30 100-watt bulbs per floor within the common areas. That is a total of 900 100-watt bulbs. If they are switched out to fluorescent bulbs, check out the energy savings just from that one change. Even better, what if you can cut back to 60-watt bulbs?

Other changes can include installing motion-detector switches for lighting in common areas like bathrooms, locker rooms and hallways. If the lights are left on, the next person coming in to shut them off may walk in hours later. These minor changes pay for themselves fairly quickly.

Next, add to all those savings in the common areas the savings that individuals would also reap if they changed all the lights in their condos to fluorescent bulbs. Just by changing out all the lights in a building, you could change the whole dynamics of peak usage and power brownouts in the summer. All of this could be done without any drastic lifestyle or behavioral change.

While you really won’t see any difference in the brightness of the lighting, you will see some benefit to your association fees. If every building would do this in downtown Chicago, how much electricity could we save? Should there be an incentive for something like this?

In Wisconsin, the state actually gives some energy rebates if you buy fluorescent bulbs for your house or condo. Illinois should take a look into this and adopt the same program. You buy energy-efficient bulbs and get some cash back.

Reducing Mass Transit

Why would you want to reduce mass transit? That doesn’t sound like it promotes energy conservation, right? Well, let’s take a look at the waste.

Say you want to reduce mass transit when no one is riding the bus on the route you have designated. You are paying for a bus driver, his or her pension and benefits, the cost of the bus, the cost of the fuel for the bus, the insurance, the support people for the bus, their pension and benefits, the maintenance facility and all the other associated costs to run the bus route.

If you calculate the cost per rider on some suburban bus routes, you have a huge amount of money being spent for little benefit.

There is no payback or energy conservation for these bus routes when there is no one riding the buses. Where are the studies and subsequent public outcry for the waste of taxpayer monies on buses that have no one riding them? In some cases, we have created bureaucracies that serve little public good.

Take all that wasted money and increase the maintenance of the road infrastructure.

Increase the lanes of suburban roads in DuPage and Kane counties that should have been widened 10 years ago to handle the traffic. Some would say that is encouraging individuals to drive instead of taking mass transit. If they could take mass transit, they would have taken it when gas shot up to $2.60 a gallon.

Best Practices Not Found in Bureaucracies

Let’s focus on problems and solutions that are real. Make roads more efficient and set up stop-light patterns to reduce wasted idle time at lights. Priorities have to be reviewed as some transportation dynamics have radically changed. In the meantime, the ridership on some of these mass-transit providers has not.

If you ride on some of the commuter trains, you know that schedules and stops haven’t changed in years.

Trains still stop at certain locations on every run even though the location is not important any more or has lost its stature as a major employment center. Cut back on the non-important stops. If riders have figured this out on their daily commute, what is wrong with the bureaucracy running the trains?

This leadership is not aware of the inefficiencies. When we talk about becoming more energy efficient in this country, we should start with the simple things. Some of the complex things just might take care of themselves. Plant a tree this year.

Carlinism: Energy conservation does not have to impact your lifestyle and can actually save you some money.