Energy Efficiency Boom Makes Big Impact on U.S. Efficiency and Creates Jobs, But Remains a Relatively Untapped Resource

It's the U.S. energy boom that no one knows about: Energy efficiency may be the farthest-reaching, least-polluting, and fastest-growing energy success story of the last 50 years. But it also is the most invisible, the least understood, and in serious danger of missing out on needed future investments.

In the first attempt to quantify the overall impact of the hidden U.S. energy efficiency boom, a major new report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) shows that U.S. energy consumption (as measured per dollar of economic output) will have been slashed by the end of 2008 to half of what it was in 1970.

By Tom Raum, Associated Press

June 24th, 2008 WASHINGTON — Like two rival filling-station owners across the highway in long-bygone price wars, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain keep putting up flashy signs and offering new incentives in hopes of attracting customers battered by $4 gas prices.

McCain is offering a summer break from the 18.4-cent federal gasoline tax, and holding out the promise of more offshore drilling to help you drive more cheaply to the beach. He wants to build 45 new nuclear reactors to generate electricity. On Monday, he proposed a $300 million government prize to anyone who can develop a superior battery to power cars of the future.

He may even wash your windows.

If you pull into the Obama station, he'll promise you cash back from the windfall-profits tax he plans to slap on Big Oil. Check the tires? How about promises to go after oil-market speculators who help drive up prices as well as big subsidies for solar, wind, ethanol and other alternative-energy projects? The Illinois senator likens his energy package to the Kennedy-era space program.

Oil and gas prices that have doubled in the past year have squeezed aside the war in Iraq as the No. 1 issue this election year and both parties are blaming each other for the price spike -- and for apparent congressional paralysis.

NEWARK, N.J., June 23, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ ----In the first proposal of its kind to be filed under New Jersey's new legislation that addresses regional greenhouse gases, Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) today unveiled a new program designed to curb customers' energy consumption, resulting in lower customer bills and a meaningful reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

The innovative filing with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) was made today under the recently enacted Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) legislation, which encourages utilities to invest in conservation and energy efficiency programs as part of its regulated business. The legislation, signed into law on January 13, 2008, requires the BPU to review and act on the filing within 180 days.

June 23, 2008

The rising cost of materials and labor has the potential to put an end to the nuclear renaissance before it ever gets started. Company estimates that have been released show costs for an individual unit could be as high as $12 billion, and one consultant expects those estimates could rise if material prices continue to escalate.

Florida Power & Light told the Florida Public Service Commission late last year that the cost for building new units at Turkey Point in south Florida could be up to $8,000 per kilowatt -- or $24 billion for two units. Earlier this year, Progress Energy pegged its cost estimates for two new units on Florida's west coast at about $14 billion plus $3 billion for transmission and distribution. While Progress' estimates are lower than FPL's, they are more than twice as much as the $2,000 per kilowatt that industry contractors promised for new nuclear plants just two years ago.