in the context of the current economic recession interest in ee and investments in renewable sources of energy have gained momentum due to their potential to create significant market opportunities and to contribute to the promotion of lowcarbon green growth such growth is seen as playing a significant role in simultaneously addressing several major challenges confronting the world today in particular poverty and climate change large improvements in ee have already been made resulting in net economic benefits to consumers and firms further savings in world energy use are still possible and would result in major reductions in energyrelated carbon dioxide c emissions for example the international energy agency iea estimates that accelerated ee improvements would enable three quarters of the savings in energyrelated c emissions to be achieved by if governments were to implement all the policies to address energy security and climate change that they were considering up to mid iea a