Imagine if you could attach a number to a resource, like energy, that accounts for its various possible usages. If the resource becomes more available, this number will go down and if it becomes more scarce, the number would go up.
If you wanted to use the resource, you would have to pay this number. So naturally, you wouldn't pay to use the resource for something silly. Similarly, if it's important, you'd pay as much as you had to to use the resource. This would discourage people from using the resource foolishly.
The beautiful thing about this system is that you don't have to have moral judgements about what is or isn't worthy. It wouldn't be up to any one individual to say you should use resource for X and not Y. The number would be self adjusting as more or less resources become made available or more or less uses for the resources are discovered. And as the number went up, it would incentivize people to create more of that resource or create a resource to replace it.
If only such a number existed...