Personal Energy Solutions: April 2008 Archives

In 2007, total utility green power sales exceeded 4.5 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), about a 20% increase over 2006. Approximately 600,000 customers are participating in utility customer choice programs nationwide.

Green Power Marketing Industry

Utility green pricing programs are one segment of a larger green power marketing industry that counts Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and colleges and universities among its customers, and helps support more than 3,000 MW of new renewable electricity generation capacity.

Green Marketing Tips

NREL analysts attribute the success of many programs to persistence in marketing and creative marketing strategies, including in some cases, utility partnerships with independent green power marketers. In addition, the rate premium that customers pay for green power continues to drop.

NREL performs analyses of green power market trends and is funded by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by Midwest Research Institute and Battelle.

Energy consumption is one of six factors incorporated into the tally of Forbes magazines's "Greenest States", closely linked to other "green" standards, including air quality and carbon dioxide emissions.

Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, summarized the situation in a recent presentation to Oak Ridge National Laboratory employees: "The South is the Gobi Desert of energy efficiency."

Energy Efficiency Potential Provides Greatest Savings

While bioenergy, nuclear and other expanding energy options are important, "the potential of energy efficiency is probably greater than any other resource." She views the confluence of record prices for oil and increasing anxiety over carbon emissions as a "perfect storm" that makes the attitude of both the market and the public ripe for fundamental change.

Recognizing these trends, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are developing an array of energy-efficient appliances, testing energy-saving building materials and refining a zero-energy home that literally will produce more energy than it consumes.

As world energy demand collides with the growing public desire for a carbon-constrained environment, ORNL increasingly is recognized as a source of expertise for cities, states and utilities looking to trim bulging energy waistlines. The Tennessee Valley Authority has joined state and local government as well as non-profit energy efficiency advocate groups in asking the Laboratory to provide input for policy, incentives and technologies to transform the desert of consumption into an oasis of energy efficiency.

Demonstrating a renewed commitment to energy efficiency, the TVA board recently named Joe Hoagland, former senior advisor to TVA President Tom Kilgore, to a newly created post of vice president for energy efficiency and demand response. Hoagland's first task is to determine how much energy savings TVA needs to achieve in order to meet growing energy demands over the next 20 years.

Times have clearly changed. "In order to meet the goals of low cost and reliability, energy efficiency and demand response are now tools as much as our assets that generate electricity," Hoagland says, adding that TVA's strategy also incorporates environmental concerns. "A megawatt not produced is a green megawatt.

"A megawatt not produced is a green megawatt."

When Hoagland came to his new post last fall, he was asked to determine what was needed to generate 1,200 megawatts of energy savings, or the equivalent of one large nuclear or coal-fired power plant, by 2013. "As we begin to understand the situation better, I'm not sure that is going to be enough. I expect that we will need to cut back more, much more," he says.

Meeting the challenge will require TVA to adopt a combination of tactics, including new technologies, rate restructuring, education and customer incentives to achieve the required savings. The agency has signed a memorandum of understanding with ORNL as a first step in what Hoagland envisions as a growing, and necessary, partnership with the Laboratory.

"ORNL has a broad expertise in energy efficient technologies to help us do things better," he says. Oak Ridge researchers have unique experience in

• designing zero-energy homes,
  
• creative construction techniques,
  
• new insulation technologies and
  
• a sophisticated set of energy efficiency standards.
  

If these initiatives prove successful, the potential impact is enormous. ORNL researchers believe that fully one-half of the South's anticipated increase in energy demand can be met through energy efficiency.

Read more about ORNL's Southern Energy Efficiency Initiatives