in order to avoid such unintended consequences and to increase the potential of energy efficiency for reducing pressure on the environment large scale energy efficiency measures should be implemented together with other policies that can more generally internalise environmental externalities of economic activities such as removing or reducing fossil fuel subsidies introducing an effective price on carbon carbon trading scheme and the like on their own then energy efficiency measures must therefore be seen as at best a very imperfect substitute for demand reduction nevertheless they are an indispensable element of any serious green growth strategy since they can play a critical role in softening the impact of higher fuel prices resulting from a carbon tax or some other pricebased mechanism on production and consumption moreover programmes to help lowincome households improve energy efficiency can also help mitigate the distributional consequences of many demandreduction policies as these can sometimes hit the poorest hardest