Performance when loading lots of Elements but only need limited data
Not in Craft 2 without completely bypassing ElementCriteriaModel and building your own SQL query.

In Craft 3 (currently in beta) you can, though – you can override which columns get selected in your element queries, and you can choose whether you want the data returned as element models or just plain arrays.

{% set entries = craft.entries
    .section('news')
    .select('elements.id', 'content.title')
    .asArray()
    .all() %}