Energy Efficiency Rankings

While not strictly a legal development, it is worth noting that the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has released a new ranking of U.S. states' energy efficiency efforts.

Once again, California, which has long been making strides in cutting per-capita energy use, is ranked number one. The top states are clustered in the Northeast, West Coast, and Upper Midwest.

Utilities in states that lag in the rankings--the Southeast, plus much of the Eighth and Tenth Circuits (i.e. those states cutting from the Southeast up to the north and west across the middle of the country, with the striking exception of Colorado) cite different "structural" conditions in their states, including weather conditions and energy prices, as reasons for why they lag behind in cutting their energy use and thereby greenhouse gas emissions. But as a former client, John Wilson of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, has found, legal and regulatory regimes are the most important predictor for energy efficiency rates. So ACEEE's rankings roughly reflect the progress that each state has made in making its legal requirements and regulatory environment friendly to progress energy efficiency.

This shows the importance of an energy efficiency resource standard at the federal level--without it, the U.S. will only achieve a portion of the greenhouse gas reductions it could from the electricity sector. Unfortunately, Representative Markey's proposed national EE standards survived in the final Waxman-Markey Bill that passed the House last spring only in a watered-down form. There is little hope that the Senate will add an EE standard, if and when it produces its own version of a climate bill.

An abstract of the report can be found here. The full report (visible after registering) can be read here. And ACEEE's press release here.