By Eric Pooley

Source: Flickr/Alison Curtis

When news broke this week alleging that officials working for Gov. Rick Scott of Florida – a state that faces devastating impacts from climate change, such as being partially submerged – had unofficially banned use of the terms "climate change" and "global warming" from state documents, I had to check my calendar to see what year this is.

It felt as if we were back in 2003, when the George W. Bush administration was up to the same tricks. A former American Petroleum Institute lobbyist named Philip Cooney, who was then chief of staff in the White House Council on Environmental Quality, made hundreds of edits and deletions to EPA documents.

This country is drowning

Bush's White House tried to muzzle the EPA

Cooney's goal, according to a House committee investigation, was to “exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties or to deemphasize or diminish the importance of the human role in global warming.” Cooney insisted on such extreme edits that that EPA decided to eliminate the climate change section from one report entirely.

After New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin broke the news about what was going on, Cooney resigned from the White House – and went to work for Exxon Mobil.

It's not yet clear exactly what happened in Florida. After four former staffers with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said they'd been told not to use the terms "climate change," "global warming" or "sustainability," and that this ban was widely known, Gov. Scott told reporters this week "it's not true."

The DEP website does include references to climate change, though most are several years old. Meanwhile, at least one group has asked the agency's inspector general to investigate.

Other states tried to censor, too

With an overwhelming majority of the American public favoring climate action, skeptical politicians are starting to crab-walk in the direction of climate reality. “I’m not a scientist” is the current favorite dodge and also with Gov. Scott – an attempt to avoid both outright denial and the responsibility to act that comes with recognizing the problem.

But as Emily Atkin reported in Climate Progress, other states where the governors still don’t accept the scientific validity of human-caused climate change have also been pulling out the muzzle.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources was accused of pulling references to climate change from its website under orders from aides to Governor Tom Corbett. Corbett has since been voted out of office in favor of Gov. Tom Wolf, who understands that climate change is real.

North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources was caught doing the same thing. This is the state where the General Assembly in 2012 passed a four-yearmoratorium on policies that rely on scientific models for sea level rise.

Maybe these states should require environmental officials to scrunch their eyes shut, stick their fingers in their ears and chant "nya-nya-nya." That would surely solve the problem.

Enough already

Here’s a prediction: Attempts to expunge the climate problem by executive fiat – to air-brush state websites and muzzle scientists – are on their last legs. So are evasions like “I’m not a scientist.”

Americans are raising the bar on how politicians from both parties talk about this issue. Voters will increasingly reward climate honesty and climate action.

Politicians who don't deliver will find themselves punished at the polls.

This post first appeared on our EDF Voices Blog.

By Eric Pooley

Source: Flickr/Alison Curtis

When news broke this week alleging that officials working for Gov. Rick Scott of Florida – a state that faces devastating impacts from climate change, such as being partially submerged – had unofficially banned use of the terms "climate change" and "global warming" from state documents, I had to check my calendar to see what year this is.

It felt as if we were back in 2003, when the George W. Bush administration was up to the same tricks. A former American Petroleum Institute lobbyist named Philip Cooney, who was then chief of staff in the White House Council on Environmental Quality, made hundreds of edits and deletions to EPA documents.

This country is drowning

Bush's White House tried to muzzle the EPA

Cooney's goal, according to a House committee investigation, was to “exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties or to deemphasize or diminish the importance of the human role in global warming.” Cooney insisted on such extreme edits that that EPA decided to eliminate the climate change section from one report entirely.

After New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin broke the news about what was going on, Cooney resigned from the White House – and went to work for Exxon Mobil.

It's not yet clear exactly what happened in Florida. After four former staffers with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said they'd been told not to use the terms "climate change," "global warming" or "sustainability," and that this ban was widely known, Gov. Scott told reporters this week "it's not true."

The DEP website does include references to climate change, though most are several years old. Meanwhile, at least one group has asked the agency's inspector general to investigate.

Other states tried to censor, too

With an overwhelming majority of the American public favoring climate action, skeptical politicians are starting to crab-walk in the direction of climate reality. “I’m not a scientist” is the current favorite dodge and also with Gov. Scott – an attempt to avoid both outright denial and the responsibility to act that comes with recognizing the problem.

But as Emily Atkin reported in Climate Progress, other states where the governors still don’t accept the scientific validity of human-caused climate change have also been pulling out the muzzle.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources was accused of pulling references to climate change from its website under orders from aides to Governor Tom Corbett. Corbett has since been voted out of office in favor of Gov. Tom Wolf, who understands that climate change is real.

North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources was caught doing the same thing. This is the state where the General Assembly in 2012 passed a four-yearmoratorium on policies that rely on scientific models for sea level rise.

Maybe these states should require environmental officials to scrunch their eyes shut, stick their fingers in their ears and chant "nya-nya-nya." That would surely solve the problem.

Enough already

Here’s a prediction: Attempts to expunge the climate problem by executive fiat – to air-brush state websites and muzzle scientists – are on their last legs. So are evasions like “I’m not a scientist.”

Americans are raising the bar on how politicians from both parties talk about this issue. Voters will increasingly reward climate honesty and climate action.

Politicians who don't deliver will find themselves punished at the polls.

This post first appeared on our EDF Voices Blog.

By Marcelo Norsworthy

EDFers Marcelo Norsworthy and Chris Wolfe (L) with Rachel Powers, Executive Director of Citizens’ Environmental Coalition (CEC).

The Houston environmental community was strengthened and reinvigorated after last week’s Greater Houston Environmental Summit, an event organized by the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition (CEC). The summit was designed to allow local environmental leaders to share their take on how Houston is addressing key challenges related to growth, transportation, air quality, and infrastructure. A principle message from the summit was how high-paced growth and demographic changes have been altering the face of Houston. What does Houston’s rapidly-growing, multi-ethnic population, in fact, mean for environmental issues?

Houston, the 6th largest metro region, is expected to see its population jump to more than 7 million people by 2020. This rapid growth means that, while there are more pressures on natural resources like air quality, there may also be a new resolve to make significant emissions reductions. As many of the speakers at the summit highlighted, the time is now to move the needle on a number of environmental challenges facing Houston and its diverse population.

New Blog: #Houston Environmental Summit Highlights Gulf Coast #Environmental Progress and Future…
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Houston leaders recognize that good air quality is essential to a high quality of life. Yet, while the air has gotten cleaner, Houston is still in violation of national health-based standards, and many communities continue to suffer from harmful pollution. Understanding the demographic changes in Houston helps to frame air quality advocacy work and to propel new projects and initiatives. The demographic changes, new national environmental and public health standards, projected population and industrial growth, and renewed attention on environmental justice issues mean that environmental advocates, such as CEC, EDF, and numerous partners in attendance, are poised to make tremendous strides helping Houston become a healthier place to live.

EDF was thrilled to engage with many long-time Houston air quality partners at the CEC event and meet other groups working on improving Houston’s quality of life. As EDF advances efforts such as environmental performance metrics for seaports and updated standards for heavy-duty trucks, we will continue to collaborate with our partners as well as forge new relationships. The CEC Greater Houston Environmental Summit was a terrific platform for strengthening partnerships and bringing the environmental community together to learn what’s next for Houston. It’s an exciting time to be an environmental advocate, and we look forward to sharing great successes in the future.

By Suzy Friedman

Christine Hamilton and her family have been farming and ranching in central South Dakota for more than 120 years – and they hope to still be farming there 120 years from now.

But to be able to ensure the long-term viability of her family’s farm, Christine and her colleagues at Christiansen Land and Cattle (CLC) knew that they would need to take a step back, look closely at their operations, and set a vision for the future.

Tools and certification programs can help farmers like Christine to measure and understand the sustainability of their farm and ranch operations, and to set specific goals. But none of these platforms was a good fit for CLC, which raises crops such as corn, soybeans, and winter wheat, as well as cattle. So Christine led the development of a customized sustainability management plan for CLC that articulates what is important to them now and what they want to improve in the future.

Here, in honor of USDA’s new focus on women in agriculture, I ask Christine about her farm’s visionary plan.

What does sustainability mean to your operations?

Sustainability is just another word for survivability. For us, it means economic viability first – we can’t be sustainable without being profitable. We need to be profitable in order to invest and reinvest in measures that allow us to leave the land in as good or better condition than when we found it.

During the past 15-20 years, the farm has been involved with several USDA conservation programs and used conservation tillage, variable rate technologies, cover crops, optical technology, and soil health measures. We also are trying to understand how we can increase yields with the same or even fewer inputs – thereby saving money and potentially reducing fertilizer use. Our core philosophy involves striving for continuous improvement.

Why did you decide to create a sustainability vision for your operation?

I have been involved for several years, through a producer group called Triple Bottom Line, LLC, with The Sustainability Consortium, a group of more than 100 organizations working to inform decision makers on the sustainability of consumer products by evaluating supply chains and lifecycles. There is a lot of progress being made when it comes to evaluating the food supply chain, but I didn’t think the discussions included the conservation concepts and tools that producers are already using.

I wanted to be able to articulate what growers are already doing in a quantifiable way, so that we could understand and set baselines for conservation activities. Once we have a baseline, we can evaluate whether or not our efforts are effective going forward.

So, we worked with our agronomy advisors from Agrinetix to create our own standards and processes for sustainability. We needed to understand what made sense for us economically, considering our people and communities, as well as the environment.

Measuring corn root penetration at CLC.

What does the sustainability management plan entail?

In order to determine which components to focus on for the future, we created a weighted ranking process that will help us gauge our priorities on several dimensions, including environmental dimensions such as wind erosion and water quality. We are looking at all of our operational elements and from there we will move toward evaluating emissions of greenhouse gases, air and water quality, energy usage, and social benefits such as community impacts.

It’s an evolving process and we are still working on what these definitions even mean as an industry, and what the impacts and implications will be for producers.

Energy use scored low for us on this first pass, for example, because the farm uses comparatively little electricity, so we won’t focus on improvements in that area right away. However, water quality and quantity scored high for us, so we know we want to work on that. The important thing is that all of these findings included direct input from our team, who are the right people to include when deciding which practices fit best for our organization.

What is next for CLC?

The sustainability plan will be finished by the summer, and we’ll then set up quarterly meetings to review our progress with implementing the plan, make revisions if necessary, and continue to establish new priorities.

Written by Molly Rauch

This piece was written by Molly Rauch and Julie Hantman, both of whom are D.C. moms.

With the city’s free museums and its universal pre-K program, we give D.C. an “A” as a place to raise kids. That’s why as moms we’re troubled that the D.C. metropolitan region gets an “F” from the American Lung Association for smog, a powerful lung irritant that triggers asthma and shortens lives. For a city with 14,000 asthmatic children – almost 13 percent of all D.C.’s children – that’s a grade that we moms can’t accept.

Until March 17th, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is accepting public comments on a proposal to tighten national standards for ground-level ozone, the scientific term for smog. Currently the standard is 75 parts per billion.

Strong evidence indicates serious health impacts from smog, even at lower levels. EPA’s external scientific advisory panel found that a smog standard of 60 parts per billion would be healthier for Americans and would especially protect those most vulnerable to the health effects of smog, including children. We agree that EPA should set the ozone limit at 60 parts per billion.

The District’s smog problem is a prism for the nation as a whole, and shows why we can’t put off stronger federal standards for this harmful air pollutant.

Ground-level ozone is formed when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds combine in the presence of sunlight. Heat speeds up this process, which is why we commonly have air quality alerts in the dog days of summer. But even in the winter our region can struggle to keep smog levels down.

Despite its infamous Beltway traffic, further reductions in emissions from cars, trucks, and other local pollution sources will only go so far. The D.C. metro region creates only about 25 percent of its smog pollution. Most of the smog our families breathe originates in other states — from dirty coal plants in the Midwest, whose pollution routinely drifts our way.

Stronger national standards will help clean up the sources of smog here at home and in other places across the country, so that the District’s families can breathe easier.

There are cost effective ways to reduce smog pollution. In some cases, this means installing pollution control devices on polluting facilities. In other cases, it means running those pollution control devices instead of leaving them idle. Indeed, some power plants in states upwind of the District simply don’t turn on the pollution controls that have already been installed. The resulting pollution can trigger asthma attacks in our children. That’s an affront to us as mothers.

Our region’s smog levels are on the decline – something we applaud – but they are still high enough to cause health problems in children. Our kids need polluters around D.C. and in other states to clean up their act.

Asthmatic children aren’t the only District residents who would benefit. Smog pollution interferes with children’s lung development and may even affect pregnant women, decreasing birth weight in newborns. It causes heart failure and respiratory infections, sending older adults to the hospital, sometimes with fatal results. Adults and children who exercise, work, or play outside – even those without asthma – can cough, get short of breath, and feel that signature burn in their lungs on the smoggiest days.

Breathing smog harms everyone – from our children playing at neighborhood playgrounds to Members of Congress working on the Hill.

When kids bring home bad grades, moms are prepared to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work needed to address the problem. It’s time for our region – and the states that send us their smog pollution – to do the same for the District’s failing smog grade. We all should support strong smog standards so our kids can breathe easier.


TELL EPA TO PROTECT LITTLE LUNGS FROM SMOG





By Elizabeth B. Stein

Nearly a year ago, the New York Public Service Commission (Commission) initiated a groundbreaking effort, called ‘Reforming the Energy Vision’ (REV), to overhaul the longstanding electric utility business model. In the months since starting the REV proceeding, the Commission has sought advice from Department of Public Service staff, industry stakeholders, and environmental non-profits, among others, quietly refining its vision while largely refraining from big pronouncements about the progress of the proceeding.

That changed late last month when the Commission issued its ‘Track 1’ order establishing the ‘vision’ component of the REV proceeding. We are now starting to get a better sense of what sort of future electric marketplace the Commission anticipates and what role utility companies would play in this new marketplace. We can also begin to assess the extent to which this new marketplace will lead to the improved environmental outcomes stated as a goal of this proceeding.

Market structure

Transformation is a messy business, and transformation of a complex system that cannot take a day off – that is, the electric system – is particularly messy. It is a perfect example of the adage about rebuilding a jet plane while flying it. The Commission has attempted to make the task more manageable by dividing the proceeding into two tracks, with Track 1 laying out the vision and Track 2 outlining regulatory changes that support the vision.

Some of the clearest pronouncements in this order concern the role existing electric utility companies will adopt in a new electric marketplace. Electric utility companies have been granted the role of Distributed System Platform Provider (DSP), which would provide a technology platform and marketplace allowing distributed energy resources, including demand response (a practice allowing customers to modify use of power from the grid in exchange for compensation), energy efficiency, storage, and on-site generation, to compete fairly with the utilities’ own distribution infrastructure. When deployed at scale, distributed energy resources could help avoid conventional grid upgrades.

In their capacity as DSPs, the electric utilities will have three sets of responsibilities: integrated system planning, grid operations, and market operations. The order indicates the DSPs are to be compensated for how well they play this new role, but exactly how is a Track 2 question – and an extremely challenging one that goes to the heart of the REV proceeding.

However, the order did answer a central question about the design of the new marketplace. The Commission does not envision electric utilities owning distributed energy resources other than in some specified situations.

Market power concerns

The separation of the DSP function from ownership of distributed energy resources, which are to be integrated into the power grid, responds to concerns voiced by many parties, including Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), about the outsized market power potentially wielded by a utility functioning as the DSP while also in the business of owning distributed energy resources. Such an entity would have the greatest information on where distributed energy resources were needed most, while standing to benefit financially from meeting those needs. This potential conflict situation is avoided by disallowing ownership when operating as the DSP. Not only will the utilities be prevented from playing in the distributed energy marketplace, they will also be required to provide enough information about the grid to allow third parties to compete most effectively.

The Commission could have responded to concerns about market power through intense regulation and oversight of electric utilities to keep them from stymying competition, but opted instead to separate control of the platform from the opportunity to sell distributed energy resources. Separating these functions makes the DSP more strongly resemble the Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs), entities that perform a similar platform function in the bulk power sector. However, there are still wrinkles to be ironed out. Whereas all the RTOs and ISOs are non-profit entities that do not own infrastructure assets, the electric utilities that are going to take on the DSP roles are investor-owned, and will continue to own distribution assets. As such, the compensation issues will need to be addressed.

While the separation of the DSP and ownership of distributed energy resources roles is a crucial aspect, the order has many other moving parts. A subsequent blog will consider some of the environmental implications of this market structure, as well as other aspects of the order.

To learn more about New York's ‘Reforming the Energy Vision’ (REV), please join us on March 31, 2015 in New York City for the forum, “On the REV Agenda: the Role of Time-Variant Pricing,” which Environmental Defense Fund is co-hosting with the New York Department of Public Service and the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. The forum will focus on the role electricity pricing plays in New York’s ongoing utility reform efforts. To register and learn more, click here.

By Elizabeth B. Stein

Nearly a year ago, the New York Public Service Commission (Commission) initiated a groundbreaking effort, called ‘Reforming the Energy Vision’ (REV), to overhaul the longstanding electric utility business model. In the months since starting the REV proceeding, the Commission has sought advice from Department of Public Service staff, industry stakeholders, and environmental non-profits, among others, quietly refining its vision while largely refraining from big pronouncements about the progress of the proceeding.

That changed late last month when the Commission issued its ‘Track 1’ order establishing the ‘vision’ component of the REV proceeding. We are now starting to get a better sense of what sort of future electric marketplace the Commission anticipates and what role utility companies would play in this new marketplace. We can also begin to assess the extent to which this new marketplace will lead to the improved environmental outcomes stated as a goal of this proceeding.

Market structure

Transformation is a messy business, and transformation of a complex system that cannot take a day off – that is, the electric system – is particularly messy. It is a perfect example of the adage about rebuilding a jet plane while flying it. The Commission has attempted to make the task more manageable by dividing the proceeding into two tracks, with Track 1 laying out the vision and Track 2 outlining regulatory changes that support the vision.

Some of the clearest pronouncements in this order concern the role existing electric utility companies will adopt in a new electric marketplace. Electric utility companies have been granted the role of Distributed System Platform Provider (DSP), which would provide a technology platform and marketplace allowing distributed energy resources, including demand response (a practice allowing customers to modify use of power from the grid in exchange for compensation), energy efficiency, storage, and on-site generation, to compete fairly with the utilities’ own distribution infrastructure. When deployed at scale, distributed energy resources could help avoid conventional grid upgrades.

In their capacity as DSPs, the electric utilities will have three sets of responsibilities: integrated system planning, grid operations, and market operations. The order indicates the DSPs are to be compensated for how well they play this new role, but exactly how is a Track 2 question – and an extremely challenging one that goes to the heart of the REV proceeding.

However, the order did answer a central question about the design of the new marketplace. The Commission does not envision electric utilities owning distributed energy resources other than in some specified situations.

Market power concerns

The separation of the DSP function from ownership of distributed energy resources, which are to be integrated into the power grid, responds to concerns voiced by many parties, including Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), about the outsized market power potentially wielded by a utility functioning as the DSP while also in the business of owning distributed energy resources. Such an entity would have the greatest information on where distributed energy resources were needed most, while standing to benefit financially from meeting those needs. This potential conflict situation is avoided by disallowing ownership when operating as the DSP. Not only will the utilities be prevented from playing in the distributed energy marketplace, they will also be required to provide enough information about the grid to allow third parties to compete most effectively.

The Commission could have responded to concerns about market power through intense regulation and oversight of electric utilities to keep them from stymying competition, but opted instead to separate control of the platform from the opportunity to sell distributed energy resources. Separating these functions makes the DSP more strongly resemble the Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs), entities that perform a similar platform function in the bulk power sector. However, there are still wrinkles to be ironed out. Whereas all the RTOs and ISOs are non-profit entities that do not own infrastructure assets, the electric utilities that are going to take on the DSP roles are investor-owned, and will continue to own distribution assets. As such, the compensation issues will need to be addressed.

While the separation of the DSP and ownership of distributed energy resources roles is a crucial aspect, the order has many other moving parts. A subsequent blog will consider some of the environmental implications of this market structure, as well as other aspects of the order.

To learn more about New York's ‘Reforming the Energy Vision’ (REV), please join us on March 31, 2015 in New York City for the forum, “On the REV Agenda: the Role of Time-Variant Pricing,” which Environmental Defense Fund is co-hosting with the New York Department of Public Service and the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. The forum will focus on the role electricity pricing plays in New York’s ongoing utility reform efforts. To register and learn more, click here.

BP Labors to Cast Doubt on Gulf Spill Study It Dislikes
By Bryan Gruley & Bradley Olson, Bloomberg Business. March 11, 2015
“As the five-year anniversary of the spill nears, BP is waging a public campaign to promote the idea that the gulf has largely recovered. The company’s public statements have hewed closer to the adversarial tone of litigation than the conciliatory stance the company struck immediately following the well blowout, which killed 11 men and fouled Gulf Coast beaches from Texas to Florida.” (Read More)
 
US Gulf Coast Prime for Wetlands Restoration: Study
By Katy Sater, The AnthropoZine. March 12, 2015
“Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost an area of wetlands equivalent to the size of Delaware, and it continues to lose a football field of wetlands every hour. If current loss rates continue, by the year 2040 more than one million acres of wetlands will be gone – and the carbon stored in these ecosystems will be released into the atmosphere.” (Read More)

BP Labors to Cast Doubt on Gulf Spill Study It Dislikes
By Bryan Gruley & Bradley Olson, Bloomberg Business. March 11, 2015
“As the five-year anniversary of the spill nears, BP is waging a public campaign to promote the idea that the gulf has largely recovered. The company’s public statements have hewed closer to the adversarial tone of litigation than the conciliatory stance the company struck immediately following the well blowout, which killed 11 men and fouled Gulf Coast beaches from Texas to Florida.” (Read More)
 
US Gulf Coast Prime for Wetlands Restoration: Study
By Katy Sater, The AnthropoZine. March 12, 2015
“Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost an area of wetlands equivalent to the size of Delaware, and it continues to lose a football field of wetlands every hour. If current loss rates continue, by the year 2040 more than one million acres of wetlands will be gone – and the carbon stored in these ecosystems will be released into the atmosphere.” (Read More)

BP Labors to Cast Doubt on Gulf Spill Study It Dislikes
By Bryan Gruley & Bradley Olson, Bloomberg Business. March 11, 2015
“As the five-year anniversary of the spill nears, BP is waging a public campaign to promote the idea that the gulf has largely recovered. The company’s public statements have hewed closer to the adversarial tone of litigation than the conciliatory stance the company struck immediately following the well blowout, which killed 11 men and fouled Gulf Coast beaches from Texas to Florida.” (Read More)
 
US Gulf Coast Prime for Wetlands Restoration: Study
By Katy Sater, The AnthropoZine. March 12, 2015
“Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost an area of wetlands equivalent to the size of Delaware, and it continues to lose a football field of wetlands every hour. If current loss rates continue, by the year 2040 more than one million acres of wetlands will be gone – and the carbon stored in these ecosystems will be released into the atmosphere.” (Read More)

By Dick Munson

Source: flickr/justinwkern

Energy efficiency may be the Rodney Dangerfield of electricity policy. Compared to bulky power plants, it gets little respect.

Part of the problem is efficiency is hard to visualize. A new refrigerator, even if it uses 50 percent less power, still looks like a refrigerator. And, insulation is buried within walls, whereas it’s hard to miss a nuclear reactor or even a wind turbine.

Another issue is power companies see efficiency as competition and want to limit its development. FirstEnergy, for instance, lobbied to freeze Ohio’s energy efficiency standards, abandoned its own conservation programs, and led efforts to do away with demand response, an innovative energy management program that rewards people and businesses for conservation.

So, the Illinois Power Agency’s (IPA’s) recent decision to put efficiency and generation on the same level provides some much needed respect.

Illinois Steps Up and Gives #EnergyEfficiency the Respect It Deserves from @DickMunson
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The IPA is a rather unique government agency, tasked with procuring electricity on behalf of customers for Illinois’ two main utilities, ComEd and Ameren Illinois. Beginning in 2014, EDF and the Citizens Utility Board (CUB) began advocating for IPA to include energy efficiency in its proposed procurement plan. If such negawatts (a wonky term for the avoided electricity achieved through efficiency) were treated on par with generation resources, i.e. power plants, we argued that the costs of supplying electricity would fall, as would greenhouse-gas emissions.

The IPA recently adopted our plan, calling it “Energy Efficiency as a Supply Resource,” and proposed conducting a separate auction to capture peak energy efficiency. Specifically, these are the negawatts that reduce the need for “peaker” generation plants, which only run during the most high-demand (and expensive) times of the day and are typically the dirtiest to operate. Not surprisingly, the utilities and power companies objected. Thankfully, the Illinois Commerce Commission, the agency charged with regulating electricity in the state, upheld the IPA’s approach. The agency is requiring the state’s major utilities to include the specific price of electricity at all hours of the day, in order to calculate the true value of energy efficiency programs.

Third-party energy efficiency programs, as part of their cost-benefit tests, will now be able to calculate how much efficiency trims energy use, when that shedding occurs, and the value of that avoided electricity. This change will be particularly beneficial to homes with smart thermostats, which can be programmed to temporarily reduce air conditioning during the hottest part of the day, and small businesses with energy-efficiency equipment that runs during high-cost, ‘peak’ hours.

By giving energy efficiency the respect it deserves, Illinois will be able to take advantage of its ongoing deployment of smart meters in order to advance more energy-saving innovations. Such procurement will help alleviate stress on the power grid, especially during ‘peak’ times, in order to reduce overall energy demand, cut pollution, and trim the price of electricity for Illinoisans.