"How do we remove the barriers? It turns out we know a decent amount about them but comparatively little about how to overcome them. A great primer on this is “Energy Efficiency Economics and Policy” from Resources for the Future. It’s a survey of research on efficiency economics, market and behavioral failures therein, and policies to address those failures. When assessing such policies, the authors say a lot of things like, “Data indicating the cost-effectiveness of these programs are not readily available.” And, “These net benefit estimates have to our knowledge not been subject to independent verification in the economic literature.” We’ve had three decades of cheap energy, so there’s been little reason to focus on accelerating efficiency; our know-how froze in the 1970s."