Energy is precious resource and we all get only one an hour. Without much delay I will lay down the idea on how to use less of it in the beginning and still develop in the normal pace.

Don't produce cheapest items, trade for them on the market for more expensive items. As of this writing vegetables are so cheap in relation to other items that it does not make economical sense to produce them, because market gives us such a good trading prices. So, in respect to the energy per produce it makes sense to produce items with have high(est) trading value and trade them for vegetables.

It also makes sense to build second production facility for item of highest market demand and keep producing those items and trade them for the ones you need.

to finalize, I would not produce veggies iron and clay at current market condition, but I would double produce meat.

This strategy saves me energy on production of cheap goods.