If you follow the energy needs of the country, you know that there is a conundrum, we need new energy to power our ever more sophisticated devices (did you kow that a plasma TV consumes 3 times the power of you refrigerator?), that new coal plants (our most prolific energy resource) are being denied due to carbon concerns, and new nuclear is a number of years off and has the waste issue to still be resolved. Below is a summary of what one utility, where I used to work and we affectionately called Pigs, Goats and Elephants (PG&E), is doing. Note, coal and nuclear are both banned by law in California.
From the Wall Street Journal: SAN FRANCISCO -- California´s biggest utility is making a huge financial bet on solving a light-bulb riddle: How much energy can it conserve by getting its customers to remove one sort of bulb and screw in another?
To cut energy costs and help reduce the emissions that cause global warming, utilities are facing an unusual imperative. They need to convince consumers to use less of their product. PG&E is staking its success on getting consumers to junk conventional incandescent light bulbs in favor of energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps,commonly called CFLs -- corkscrew- or egg-shaped bulbs that use about a quarter as much electricity as regular bulbs and last several times as long.
California policy makers have set the most ambitious conservation targets in the U.S. The state´s three major investor-owned electric utilities were told last summer to reduce their combined energy use by the equivalent of three power plants to earn big bonuses -- or face the possibility of big penalties if they fail.
Utilities across the country are watching for the results. About half of U.S. energy use flows through the nation´s utilities, and a powerful combination of rising fuel costs and climate-change fears is putting increasing pressure on them to find ways to reduce the demand. Coal plants are causing environmental concerns, natural gas is subject to huge price swings, nuclear plants remain controversial and even wind farms are proving hard to site without opposition. So producing less energy has new appeal for utilities´ bottom lines.
The utility is counting on lighting for more than half its state-ordered conservation gains, and is spending $116 million on making CFL bulbs cheap, plentiful and attractive enough to customers. There are obstacles: In addition to the expense when the bulbs aren´t subsidized, they contain a tiny amount of toxic mercury, making them harder to dispose of when they burn out or break.
California regulators essentially are giving utilities a chance to earn as much profit by reducing energy as by producing it. The state has designated $2 billion in utility customers´ payments to be spent over three years on conservation programs. The utilities need to spend that money to find ways to avoid another $2.7 billion in energy costs, by reducing demand enough that they can buy less power or build fewer plants. If they come close enough to the target, regulators award them a cut of the savings; if not, they pay a penalty.
Lighting makes up about 37% of the average energy use in a typical California home, according to the energy commission, and CFLs can slash that part of the bill by three-quarters. But because it´s mostly used at night, in most areas of the country lighting has little effect on peak power demand -- a major reason utilities build power plants.
PG&E´s Pacific Gas & Electric unit, which serves one in 20 Americans, tumbled into bankruptcy protection as a result of the state´s 2000-01 energy crisis, but has since bounced back with ambitions of becoming the nation´s greenest utility company.
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