This is probably my personal opinion, but I think you can't do one or the other. You can't trade up between them.
Energy efficiency is very important for things like existing houses or existing buildings, or for increasing the efficiency of appliances, as you mentioned, or making cars more efficient. At the same time, if we keep going the way we're going, the International Energy Agency predicts that our energy consumption around the world will increase by 60% by 2010 or 2012. So we can't afford to sit and not find more alternative sustainable ways to produce energy, because we're going to need it.
It is not one choice or the other. We have to really tackle both of them.