Energy Efficiency Programs May Have Caused Decline in US Electricity Sales, ACEEE Says
Environmental Leader, February 26, 2014US electricity sales have been on the decline since 2007 even as the economy has recovered, according to a white paper by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
The white paper “Why is Electricity No Longer Growing?” posits that the recession alone can’t explain the stagnation in electricity use in recent years. Electricity sales were growing more than 2 percent a year in the early 1990s. In the past few years, growth has stopped and retail electricity sales in 2012 were 1.9 percent lower than in 2007, the peak year.
The ACEEE’s analysis of electricity trends since 1993 suggests that savings from energy efficiency programs and policies such as appliance standards and building codes are having a broad national impact on consumption in the US. The electricity savings from these programs and policies could have contributed significantly to the decline, according to theACEEE.