RLANDO, Fla. - Lynette Woide stayed home one recent afternoon so that someone from Progress Energy, the local utility, could check the house she has lived in for 20 years to make sure it was as energy efficient as possible.

"It's important to me to be a good steward with what we've been given," said Ms. Woide, who recently replaced the windows in her living room to conserve air-conditioning. "I think Americans are kind of wasteful. There isn't an unending supply of what we have."

But in her small garage sits a Chevrolet Blazer, a sport utility vehicle that Ms. Woide estimates gets 17 miles a gallon. It is a company car that she chose because it helps her haul things for work, she said. Then again, she recalled, "I could haul a lot of stuff in my Taurus, too." A Taurus gets about 30 percent better gas mileage, on average, the Environmental Protection Agency says.

Thirty years after the Arab oil embargo highlighted how this country's appetite for energy could increase its political and economic vulnerability, the spread of affluence has pushed those concerns aside.

Many Americans would like to import less oil from the Middle East. Most would like better air and water quality. But that has not stopped them from buying bigger homes and cars, as they have through the last decade, despite the political and environmental costs.

As a result, the United States is importing an ever increasing share of its oil needs, 55 percent in the first seven months of this year. That compares with about 28 percent 20 years ago, at the height of the consumer switch to vehicles that are more fuel efficient, and with nearly 35 percent in 1973, before the first Arab oil embargo.

Doug MacIntyre, senior oil market analyst for the Energy Information Administration, forecasts that imports will rise to 68 percent of consumption by 2025.

Most of it will come from the Persian Gulf region, given that two-thirds of the world's known oil resources are concentrated there. Currently, 13 percent of this country's daily oil imports come from the Persian Gulf, compared with less than 5 percent 30 years ago.

In the 1,100-page energy bill now before Congress, Republican leaders have proposed energy-saving standards for buildings and appliances, but have done little to encourage - much less to mandate - conservation in automobiles and industry, critics say.

The bill does include tax credits for people who buy high-mileage hybrid vehicles, but at the same time Republican leaders in the House removed a Senate proposal to close a loophole that gives small-business owners a tax deduction of as much as $100,000 when they buy luxury sport utility vehicles.

"The bill ignores key big-ticket savings in vehicle fuel economy and electricity efficiency," said Steven M. Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit research group. "The efficiency provisions of the current energy bill are only a Band-Aid."

Thanks to its many tourist destinations and its relatively low cost of living, Orlando has thrived despite the national economic slump, making it something of a bellwether for the rest of the United States once another period of widespread prosperity inevitably comes. Here, the gains made during the energy-related upheavals of the 1970's and 80's are clear, but their erosion since then is starkly evident, too.

Federal and local regulations have required energy-conservation measures to be built into the new houses that have sprouted here like mushrooms after a rain. But houses here, as elsewhere in the country, are considerably bigger than they were then and have many more appliances and electronics in them.

So, while American households consume 20 percent less energy on average than they did 30 years ago, the trend in recent years has been toward more energy use. American homes in 1999, the most recent year with figures available, used about 10 percent more energy than they did in 1990, according to the World Resources Institute, an environmental research and policy organization in Washington. And that does not count the energy consumed by the S.U.V.'s and pickup trucks that more and more people use as family cars.

For Thomas Lagomarsino, executive director of the Home Builders Association of Metro Orlando, the wealth that has nourished this region has made everything bigger, but not necessarily better. "The public doesn't really focus on energy," Mr. Lagomarsino said. "They focus on what they want, unfortunately. I think people should focus on energy issues, water issues. But they just want to come home and have it be nice."

Nice and efficient are not mutually exclusive. A refrigerator manufactured now, for instance, consumes less than one-third the electricity of one made three decades ago, after the government's adoption of energy-efficiency targets for appliances.

Nor are affluence and efficiency a zero-sum game. In 2002, Americans used 43 percent less energy for each dollar of gross domestic product than they did 30 years ago, according to inflation-adjusted data from the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the Energy Department. Part of that is because energy-intensive heavy industry has made way for service jobs, which use less energy for each dollar of value they create. But there was also a shift to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars and other conservation measures after oil prices spiked in the 1970's.

But many of the energy savings of the last 30 years have been offset over the last decade, especially when it comes to oil consumption. The United States, which has 5 percent of the world's population, burns 10 percent of the world's crude oil output every day just to power its cars and trucks, and 25 percent over all.

Energy experts said they expected the proportion used for transportation to increase, given that S.U.V.'s and light trucks, which are exempt from federal fuel-economy standards, are a growing percentage of the personal vehicles in use.

Many people here, and around the country, say they have a sense that too much energy is perhaps being consumed too quickly, and some are addressing it. Building codes in Florida, for example, have some of the toughest energy efficiency standards in the country. And local utilities like Progress Energy, which serves many Orlando suburbs, work with builders and homeowners to make houses and buildings more efficient.

Celebration, a town that the Walt Disney Company built 30 miles southwest of Orlando as a high-tech grasp at a more modest time, was designed in part to save energy. The town was laid out to encourage people to walk or bike, and the homes were built to conserve energy.

Susan Brassfield, 49, the director of Celebration Middle School and a resident of the town, bought an electric car when she moved here from Atlanta three years ago, and she said she used it far more than her Mercedes sedan. And she is not alone. But many of the electric vehicles there share the road with S.U.V.'s and even larger S.U.V.'s.

Mark Rutecki, a 37-year-old lawyer, moved to Celebration from Miami six years ago. On his license plate is an endangered Florida panther; the license plate is on a Hummer. He said he bought the vehicle, which weighs 6,000 pounds, because he thought it would protect his wife and two small children. But, he added, "recently I've started wondering what people think" about his owning such a vehicle, which gets about 12 miles to the gallon.

"It's not as bad as everyone thinks," he said. "The way I think about it, we're close today to switching to a hydrogen economy, so it won't matter what mileage we get on cars now. I think that will happen soon."

In fact, the commercial use of hydrogen fuel cells to run cars is at least a decade away, experts say. And even then, natural gas will be a significant source of hydrogen - and the United States is already gearing up to import large amounts of natural gas, much of it from the same countries that supply crude oil today.

Much of the momentum toward energy conservation was lost when oil prices tumbled in the mid-1980's to about $20 a barrel and stayed there through the 90's. Since then, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has adjusted production to keep prices near $25 a barrel or more. Adjusted for inflation and compared with greater affluence, oil is relatively cheap, the Energy Information Administration said. That is overriding concerns about national security and personal spending.

"If you're looking at an S.U.V., you're not that concerned about fuel costs," said Arsene Orelien, the director of Internet sales at Greenway Ford, among the area's largest car dealerships, its acres gleaming with the latest S.U.V.'s and trucks.

"A lot more families want to be part of the hip crowd," he added. "It used to be that families had a sedan and a station wagon. Then a sedan and an S.U.V. Now, it's an S.U.V. and a truck.

"It's an indication that we don't want to be like our parents. But we're in denial because we end up like our parents anyway."

NERGY experts anticipate that 2004, like every year before it, will be remarkable for how much energy Americans waste. But if energy prices climb as high as predicted, consumers are likely to pay more attention than usual to the opportunities to be more efficient, and retailers expect the results to show up at cash registers.

"We've planned for a rush to these types of products this winter," said Craig Menear, senior vice president for merchandising at Home Depot, which recently published a catalog highlighting energy-efficient products.

To understand the challenges facing energy-efficiency advocates, though, consider lighting. Sales of energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights are the fastest-growing segment of the market. But even in states like Wisconsin, where utilities have subsidized purchases of energy-efficient lighting for more than a decade, cheap incandescent bulbs outsell the newer technology by a four-to-one margin.

The Energy Department estimates that if every American homeowner simply replaced the incandescent lighting in his or her five most frequently used fixtures with compact fluorescents, the nation would save 800 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity consumption - the equivalent of shutting down 21 power plants. The cost of fluorescent bulbs is typically 8 to 10 times that of incandescents, but that initial outlay would be offset over time by their much longer life and by lower electricity bills. (As an added benefit, the Energy Department estimates, utilities would emit one trillion fewer pounds of the types of gases that contribute to global warming.)

While earlier generations of the bulbs did not fit inside many lighting fixtures, the newest designs are no bigger than the average incandescent bulb, and the industry has improved quality as well.

But no one is betting that the American lifestyle will change anytime soon to capture the potential savings. For one thing, if all households made the change, it would take about 500 million fluorescent bulbs to meet the department's goal. While manufacturers have been expanding their capacity, the total annual production capacity at the moment for such lighting is probably not much more than 55 million bulbs, according to Steve Goldmacher, a spokesman for Philips Lighting USA.

According to energy experts, lighting is just one of many fields where engineers and designers are inventing energy-efficient products faster than the products are being widely embraced. Sometimes the best-in-class technologies roll out slowly because of manufacturers; Toyota , for instance, has taken a cautious approach to expanding production and marketing for its sold-out Prius, a hybrid gasoline and electric car with a fuel efficiency that far surpasses that of anything Detroit has offered.

Next year will be the first year that all Toyota dealers in the United States can sell the Prius. While company officials here hope that shipments from Japan will rise to 36,000 from 20,000, American dealers will still not be able to get as many as they want, said Wade Hoyt, a spokesman for Toyota Motor Sales USA. Supplies are expected to be tighter for the first hybrid sport utility vehicle, a Lexus model that Toyota expects to begin importing next fall.

More often, though, the restraints lie with consumers. Most are reluctant to spend the money to replace inefficient equipment, like older air- conditioners or furnaces, with new designs until the old equipment breaks down, even when told that the new unit will pay for itself in savings within a few years.

Still, 2004 could be a relatively strong year for many energy-efficient products. Energy futures markets project high prices this winter for the fuels used to heat homes and run cars, as well as higher electricity prices. When prices jump, so does interest in efficiency.

"I would expect a lot more consumer interest in ways to cut their bills," said Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, a Washington-based clearinghouse. "There could also be more political interest."

The latter could lead to increases in the tax credits, rebate programs and other government subsidies that often play an important role in drawing business and consumer attention to energy-efficient products. State-mandated programs that were run through regulated utilities provided more than $3 billion in subsidies to customers in more than 30 states a decade ago, but many were cut back or eliminated as the power industry deregulated, according to Marc Hoffman, executive director of the Consortium for Energy Efficiency, a nonprofit group in Boston.

Mr. Hoffman said that total spending on such programs dropped as low as $500 million but has now climbed back above $1 billion. The state programs frequently build on the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star rating program, which began by setting standards for energy-efficient computer screens in 1992. Energy Star standards are now available for 40 different home and office products.

In the coming year, the E.P.A. and a number of states will be pushing to extend the Energy Star concept beyond individual products to issues like how home design and insulation interact to affect energy use.

"The typical home has enough cracks in it that it's like having a window open all the time," said Kathleen Hogan, director of the E.P.A.'s Climate Protection Partnerships division, which oversees Energy Star.

SOME builders see a growing demand for energy-efficient homes. Veridian Homes in Madison, Wis., which built a prototype home using Energy Star and other environmental standards last year with the help of money from the Energy Department, has used the findings from that research "across the board," Jeff Simon, Veridian's vice president for operations, said.

In 2004, the company plans to build 640 such homes in and around Madison, as well as a solar-powered model home that would generate as much energy as it uses.

Zero-energy housing is also on the agenda in Austin, Tex., where Austin Energy, the city-owned power company, has become an industry leader in supporting efficiency programs.

"There's always a new field to be mined," said Roger Duncan, vice president for government relations, energy and environmental policy, citing the research of Amory Lovins. Mr. Lovins has argued since the early 1980's that thanks to technology, energy efficiency is an expanding resource with constantly improving returns on investment.