If you don't need to drive around in a car then you are 1) not burning fossil fuels to drive and 2) not needing steel and other materials to manufacture said ca

If you don't need to drive around in a car then you are 1) not burning fossil fuels to drive and 2) not needing steel and other materials to manufacture said car. Energy efficiency saves energy to use it where it's really needed. This does not matter if it's one Potemkin village but it matters on the level of states and can be seen in statistics like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co... where probably every EU country is much lower than the US, for example.