Energy Efficiency Progress by America’s Utilities: An Update
Switchboard, March 25, 2014Some people are surprised to learn that our electric and natural gas utilities spend billions of dollars a year to help customers need and use less energy. But helping people get more work out of less electricity and natural gas has long been a winning strategy for many of America’s hometown utilities – and a report released this week shows that their energy efficiency budgets reached an all-time high of $7 billion last year.
In fact, these programs ranging from weatherization to high-efficiency appliance rebates saved a whopping 126 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2012, enough to power more than 12.2 million U.S. homes for one year, and avoided the generation of 89 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s why the latest annual review by the Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE) on the “State of the Efficiency Program Industry” is a welcome reminder of progress already made and benefits still to come.