All this is good stuff to look at. But if you think about the big picture, this is a bunch of people trying to find an additional 3-5% to stave off this year's crisis. Efficiency and conservation are good; but they are asymtotic. You get a lot of gains early on and then the cost of additional gains increases rapidly. We are clearly at the 'increases rapidly point' when they are talking about changing the color of streets in cities--do you know how long Cal Trans takes to patch a crack in the road and how expensive they are?
This is not people focusing on the long term. Long term, we need coal and nuclear energy because our population is growing quickly and each new body uses up energy.
Put another way, the rate of growth of energy consumption is increasing by a fairly steady percentage every year. But percentage efficiency and conservation gains level out after several years of implementation. Meanwhile, consumption just keeps increasing at a steady percentage.
Solar is still in it's infancy and relegated to niche markets. That will continue until the efficiency problems are solved (which they will be eventually). Wind energy is now sometimes competitive with fossil fuels but you have the storage problem (it comes in spurts).
Either we need fewer people or more energy and all the conservation and efficiency stuff does is change things at the margin. One efficiency area that could be (but is not being addressed) is new home construction. It would not take a lot to change building codes to make the standard new home about twice as efficient (using passive solar) than it is today. But it has the same problem--once that gain is implemented, additional gains are very costly.
Fortunately, if the government butts out, the current high oil prices will bring about more production of energy and much greater efficiency at a micro level (over a period of 10-15 years), which accomplishes a lot more than gvt. mandated efficiency changes.