While President Bush and Vice President Cheney are plumping and stumping for energy production over conservation, perhaps because of their sympathy for the petroleum industry, many big companies are looking for ways to curb and control energy consumption on the basis that it is good for business. Primarily they are looking for ways to stop waste. In the United States, both producers and users of energy have not been very careful. Generating plants send billions of potential kilowatts up smokestacks because it is too expensive to capture them.
Factories use inefficient production methods.
While it might be true that conservation alone will not solve America's energy problems, put first on the agenda conservation can go a long way to help make sure more production does not increase the waste too. The Bush administration doesn't seem to worry enough about further damaging the environment while increasing production. It wants to relax some environmental restrictions. Yet many industries are concerned about their role in creating greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change. The DuPont Co. has reduced greenhouse gas emissions from its factories around the world by half in the past decade.