Energy conservation has always proceeded along two main avenues. One involves new technology—by continually improving the efficiency of appliances or the mileage of automobiles, the overall energy intensity (energy use per person) of society decreases. Both the government and private industry have spent large sums of research-and-development dollars on countless products that has lead to great improvements in the energy efficiency of products. The second major avenue is improvement of actual practice, whether at home, in a commercial building or on the factory floor. It is based on the assumption that through ignorance, poor operation, insufficient maintenance, priority conflicts or in some cases simply sloth, that energy is used less efficiently than the current state of technology allows.

One way of closing the gap between the current state of operations and what would be considered "best practice" is to formally...