they enjoy a greater range and higher quality of shops leisure facilities schools hospitals and other services but it has also created greater demand for the services that energy provides eg heating and cooling lighting transportation increased service demand need not have led to a rise in actual energy use provided that among other factors improvements in energy efficiency kept pace however this was not the case in fact since the rate of improvement in energy efficiency has been about half of what it was in the two previous decades iea a improved energy efficiency is often the most economic and readily available means to do that