Scratching the Surface

Deck: 

A 2013 retrospective on ‘Saving Gigabucks with Negawatts’ (1985)

Fortnightly Magazine - March 2013
This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.

Slowly, ponderously, but with gathering speed, the competitive forces my NARUC talk described 29 years ago are inexorably transforming the electricity business.

Negawatts aren’t yet allowed to compete head-to-head with supply in a third of the United States, utilities in 35 states are still rewarded for selling more electricity and penalized for cutting customers’ bills, and electric generation remains far more subsidized than efficient use. Yet as predicted, electricity’s share of end-use energy is rising while total electricity use is falling. Rocky Mountain Institute’s 2011 “grand synthesis,” Reinventing Fire,1 found about 1 percent per year average demand shrinkage plausible to 2050, despite extra use for electric autos and average GDP growth of 2.4 percent per year.

This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.