Efficiency Could Help Offset Energy Demands

Maximizing energy efficiency wherever it's cost effective could save U.S. citizens more than $500 billion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to the output of 90 million cars, according to news from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA announcement came with the release of the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency's "Vision for 2025: Developing a Framework for Change," a document developed with input from more than 60 government agencies, utilities, corporations and consumers groups. Work on the action plan began in 2006.

"We remain substantially under-invested in efficiency at a time when using energy wisely can help address rising energy costs, rising emissions of greenhouse gases, and our dependence on foreign fuel supplies," wrote Marsha H. Smith and James E. Rogers, co-chairs of the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency, in the introduction to "Vision for 2025." "We need a concerted, sustained effort to overcome what are truly surmountable hurdles to making energy efficiency a larger part of our supply picture."

Smith is commissioner of the Idaho Public Utilities Commission and president-elect of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners; Rogers is president, chairman and CEO of Duke Energy.

"Vision for 2025" states that maximized energy efficiency could offset more than half of the expected increase in U.S. energy demands by 2025. Meeting that goal could save billions in energy bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change, the plan says.

The plan outlines 10 goals to help achieve the most cost-effective energy efficiency possible. The goals include making energy efficiency a high priority for utilities and state agencies, developing ways to measure and verify energy efficiency, using incentives and prices that encourage utility customers to use energy efficiently and adopting advanced technology to improve efficiency.

"Improving the energy efficiency of homes, businesses, schools, governments, and industries -- which consume more than 70 percent of the natural gas and electricity used in the United States -- is one of the most constructive, cost-effective ways to address the challenges of high energy prices, energy security and independence, environmental concerns and global climate change in the near term," the plan states. "Based on technologies and practices available today, (the energy efficiency of) many individual homes and buildings can be improved by 20 percent or more, and many industrial plants can be improved by 10 percent or more."

While energy audits and improvement programs can help owners of existing homes cut their energy bills by 20 percent -- sometimes even 50 percent -- programs for new construction could lead to net zero-energy homes by 2015 to 2020, the plan stated.

Along with its report, the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency also released a collection of resources and guides to help utilities, government agencies and other decision-makers meet improved energy-efficiency goals.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Utility Energy Efficiency Vision Can Save Billions of Dollars While Fighting Climate Change." URL: (http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/cced997c123c4308852573920068e6a6!OpenDocument)