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.