So at the end of the day with our current economic system your only going to really save energy when its not increasing.

This makes sense. My opinion is our current economic system cannot be retrofitted to work in a energy constrained world since the whole system is designed to optimize consumption.

I don't see band aids regardless of their nature is effective.
The only way out is to make holding money more valuable then spending it which mean relentless real monetary deflation and resource price inflation. The price of finished goods and services would be balanced on the two apposing trends.

This means going back to a world with little credit available. If you don't deflate in a resource constrained world you tend towards hyperinflation and currency collapse.

Resource price inflation tends to make holding the resource more valuable while monetary deflation causes the opposite.
The outcome of the two conditions is that efficiency is the real wealth. Since using less resources saves money and monetary deflation makes saving this money a good bet.
The real economy (physical goods) will shrink to probably a tenth of what we have today if that excluding base food production. Food would make a large part of the total economy at that point say 50%. Services based on renewable resources or knowledge would be the growth area along with recycling and production of longer lasting repairable goods.

This is not the world we live in now. My guess is hyperinflation before we flip to a sustainable economic model but we won't be able to transition our current one.