Why we never need to build another polluting power plant

[n2doc]

By Joseph Romm

July 28, 2008 | Suppose I paid you for every pound of pollution you generated and punished you for every pound you reduced. You would probably spend most of your time trying to figure out how to generate more pollution. And suppose that if you generated enough pollution, I had to pay you to build a new plant, no matter what the cost, and no matter how much cheaper it might be to not pollute in the first place.

Well, that's pretty much how we have run the U.S. electric grid for nearly a century. The more electricity a utility sells, the more money it makes. If it's able to boost electricity demand enough, the utility is allowed to build a new power plant with a guaranteed profit. The only way a typical utility can lose money is if demand drops. So the last thing most utilities want to do is seriously push strategies that save energy, strategies that do not pollute in the first place.

America is the Saudi Arabia of energy waste. A 2007 report from the international consulting firm McKinsey and Co. found that improving energy efficiency in buildings, appliances and factories could offset almost all of the projected demand for electricity in 2030 and largely negate the need for new coal-fired power plants. McKinsey estimates that one-third of the U.S. greenhouse gas reductions by 2030 could come from electricity efficiency and be achieved at negative marginal costs. In short, the cost of the efficient equipment would quickly pay for itself in energy savings.

While a few states have energy-efficiency strategies, none matches what California has done. In the past three decades, electricity consumption per capita grew 60 percent in the rest of the nation, while it stayed flat in high-tech, fast-growing California. If all Americans had the same per capita electricity demand as Californians currently do, we would cut electricity consumption 40 percent. If the entire nation had California's much cleaner electric grid, we would cut total U.S. global-warming pollution by more than a quarter without raising American electric bills. And if all of America adopted the same energy-efficiency policies that California is now putting in place, the country would never have to build another polluting power plant.

more:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/28/energy_efficiency/index.html

[But....]

1. Why are we sitting on our hands for 6 months...

instead of starting this work NOW!:banghead:

[hughee99]

2. One question...

"if all of America adopted the same energy-efficiency policies that California is now putting in place, the country would never have to build another polluting power plant."

While per capita consumption in CA hasn't increased, total consumption has (since the population has increased). How do you avoid producing new power for new people?

If I understand correctly, California has been "importing" energy from other states as opposed to building it's own power plants to cope with the additional power needs. It also helps that the weather tends to be milder in the larger population centers requiring less heating than Illinois (for example) and less Air Conditioning than Texas, making it easier to reduce per capita energy consumption.

I certainly agree that encouraging all states to adopt similar policies would be a step in the right direction, but to expect that this would work in the same manner in all states just doesn't make any sense to me.