California and its utilities have achieved remarkably consistent energy efficiency gains for three decades. How did they do it?
In part, a smart California Energy Commission has promoted strong building standards and the aggressive deployment of energy-efficient technologies and strategies -- and has done so with support of both Democratic and Republican leadership over three decades. I talked to California energy commissioner Art Rosenfeld -- a former DOE colleague and the godfather of energy efficiency -- about what the state does, and here are some interesting details he offered, as discussed in "Why we never need to build another polluting power plant":
Many of the strategies are obvious: better insulation, energy-efficient lighting, heating and cooling. But some of the strategies were unexpected. The state found that the average residential air duct leaked 20 to 30 percent of the heated and cooled air it carried. It then required leakage rates below 6 percent, and every seventh new house is inspected. The state found that in outdoor lighting for parking lots and streets, about 15 percent of the light was directed up, illuminating nothing but the sky. The state required new outdoor lighting to cut that to below 6 percent. Flat roofs on commercial buildings must be white, which reflects the sunlight and keeps the buildings cooler, reducing air-conditioning energy demands. The state subsidized high-efficiency LED traffic lights for cities that lacked the money, ultimately converting the entire state.
California adopted regulations so that utility company profits are not tied to how much electricity they sell. This is called "decoupling." It also allowed utilities to take a share of any energy savings they help consumers and businesses achieve. The bottom line is that California utilities can make money when their customers save money. That puts energy-efficiency investments on the same competitive playing field as generation from new power plants.
If you really want the specific strategies that California utilites use to save energy, here are the "approved program implementation plans" for 2006-2008 from one of the state's largest utilities, Southern California Edison.
The cost of efficiency programs has averaged 2 to 3 cents per avoided kilowatt hour, which is about one-fifth the cost of electricity generated from new nuclear, coal, and natural gas-fired plants. And, of course, energy efficiency does not require new power lines and does not generate greenhouse-gas emissions or long-lived radioactive waste. While California is far more efficient than the rest of the country, the state still thinks that with an even more aggressive effort, it can achieve as much additional electricity savings by 2020 as it has in the past three decades.
The energy-efficiency resource is enormous, and it is as limitless.
It is time to stop building polluting power plants.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets
Comments
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LGT Posted 11:37 am
30 Jul 2008
http://feww.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/california-fires-not ...
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JMG Posted 3:02 pm
30 Jul 2008
We don't need a "Cap and Trade" law for skyshine so that developers who want to stick in more streetlights can buy "dark sky" credits from developers who choose not to.
The 5% Project
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David Bradish Posted 8:41 pm
30 Jul 2008
California's proud claim to have kept per-capita energy consumption flat while growing its economy is less impressive than it seems. The state has some of the highest energy prices in the country--nearly twice the national average, a 2002 Milken Institute study found--largely because of regulations and government mandates to use expensive renewable sources of power. As a result, heavy manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries have been fleeing the Golden State in droves for lower-cost locales. Twenty years ago or so, you could count eight automobile factories in California; today, there's just one, and it's the same story with other industries, from chemicals to aerospace. Yet Californians still enjoy the fruits of those manufacturing industries--driving cars built in the Midwest and the South, importing chemicals and resins and paints and plastics produced elsewhere, and flying on jumbo jets manufactured in places like Everett, Washington. California can pretend to have controlled energy consumption, but it has just displaced it.
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It's hard to claim credibly that California illuminates the world when it has trouble illuminating itself. Further, California's particular path makes sense only if the rest of the country refuses to follow it. The state's lawmakers and regulators have enacted policies that for several decades have allowed Californians to feel good, even smug, about their environmental credentials. Yet California's economic prosperity has relied on the fact that other states have built power plants and established sensible regulatory regimes that don't force businesses to flee.
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California is certainly within its rights to set policies for itself and to live with the consequences. But everyone can't do what California does. Someone needs to build power plants and oil refineries. Someone needs to manufacture the cars, trucks, airplanes, and other pieces of heavy equipment that enrich Americans' lives, till our fields, and grow our economy. Someone needs to produce the plastics and chemicals that undergird our prosperity. Those things require energy, and lots of it--growing amounts of it. All the wisdom of Athens and all the power of Sparta won't change that fact.
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Millstone Posted 11:48 pm
30 Jul 2008
You are likely justified in extolling the benefits of the energy efficiency programs specifically. But as David Bradish has posted above me and I have posted in your last few posts about CA, there is a lot more at work here than just effective EE policy.
Following CA on EE might be a good idea, but unless you want to sell people on electricity price increases that will go far beyond what is already expected, I don't think their energy policy is on the whole that fantastic. Nor even feasible for many parts of the country, see renewable energy resource maps for a clue why.
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:15 am
31 Jul 2008
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10002704-54.html?tag=cn ...
The key to plentiful solar power is water, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Daniel Nocera.
Nocera and his MIT colleague, Matthew Kanan, on Thursday will publish a technical paper that describes what they claim is a breakthrough in solar energy storage.
The key to MIT's discovery is a catalyst made from abundant materials that can make oxygen gas by passing an electrical current through water more effectively than previous methods. (Credit: MIT)
The idea is to use the energy from solar photovoltaic panels (or another electricity source) to crack water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Those gases would be stored and used later in a fuel cell to make electricity when the sun is not shining.
The concept is a closed-loop system: running the hydrogen and water through the fuel cell creates water, which can be captured and used again.
The hope is that within 10 years, a cost-effective system that combines clean energy generation with storage can be engineered and available cheaply to people around the world.
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David Bradish Posted 4:50 am
31 Jul 2008
Are you saying that there's not one ounce of truth in the article? So I guess anything that comes from a conservative group is wrong. It's sad to read that politics trumps facts in this debate.
the illegal actions of companies like Enron.
Page 8 of this article (pdf) says you greatly respected Enron. Interesting. Obviously your opinion has changed though.
deregulation led most utilities to scale back their energy efficiency programs
You sure it wasn't because the EE programs were fraudulent as well? Here's page 8 from the same article I linked to above:
EES, in fact, was one of Enron's fraud-rife divisions, with the estimated savings in energy and customer costs consisting mainly of speculation and accounting tricks. EES's contracts were liabilities parading as assets.
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Saving energy profitably, above and beyond what private companies had been doing prior to outsourcing, was skinny on profits relative to risk, it turned out.
The link above is from a liberal arts college. Does that meet your standards?
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Millstone Posted 6:19 am
31 Jul 2008
US: 17,695 down to 13,884 or about 79% of 1990 jobs retained.
CA: 1,937 down to 1,452 or about 75% of 1990 jobs retained.
If the US as a whole retained the same percentage as California we would have lost another 411,000 manufacturing jobs.
You make a good point about Silicon Valley but I would argue that it is more evidence of the uniqueness of CA's situation. Just like their fairly desirable renewable energy profile CA is now home to some unique industries like Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
I am also left to wonder how much of an impact simply being subject to the brown-outs as a result of the Enron fiascoe had?
I'm not sure this is quanitified but anyone who has a parent or grandparent who grew up either during the depression or one of the WWs knows them to typically be more frugal than the latter generations.
But that doesn't mean I think we all need to experience a few years of brown-outs although if we don't build anymore coal, natural gas or nuclear power plants I bet thats what we'll get.
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Jonas Posted 9:39 pm
31 Jul 2008
I don't think so. It costs way too much. And that means we would not be spending money on renewables that work. We better spend that money today, in order to mitigate climate change, because the longer we wait, the less efficient we will be at solving the climate crisis and the costlier it will be.
Energy efficiency, the efficiency of an investment and the efficiency of solving climate change are all intertwined.
It's too easy to say that you have found a highly 'energy efficient' technology, which is however extremely inefficient as an investment, which in turn becomes an inefficient way to tackle climate change.
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