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Northwest energy conservation hit all time high in 2007

May 14, 2008

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2007 was a record year for gains in electric power efficiency in the Pacific Northwest, says Bill Booth, chairman of the Council.

The one-year, energy-conservation achievement in 2007 amounts to reduced electricity use of 200 average megawatts, or 1,750 million kilowatt-hours (an average megawatt is 1,000 kilowatt-hours delivered continuously for a year). This is the equivalent of:

“Consumers are struggling with energy prices that seem to never stop rising, but here is some good news,” Booth said. “Home owners and businesses are deciding to use electricity more efficiently, and this has the effect of lowering power bills and also helping the environment.”

The record one-year gain in 2007 adds to the region’s total energy-efficiency achievement since 1978, which now stands at 3,700 average megawatts. As electricity generation, that is more than enough power for all of Idaho and western Montana combined. The Northwest Power Act of 1980 made energy conservation — improved electricity-use efficiency — the highest-priority resource to meet rising demand for power in the Pacific Northwest. Then, as now, the cost of improving the efficiency of electricity use is two to three times less expensive than the cost of building new power plants fueled by natural gas or coal.

Besides electricity consumers, there were many contributors to the record-setting efficiency gain in 2007. These include electric utilities and the Bonneville Power Administration, which offered incentives to their customers; the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, which is working to improve national energy-efficiency standards for major appliances like clothes washers and dish washers; and state and federal governments, which are implementing codes with stronger energy-efficiency requirements.

Staff of the Council reported on the 2007 achievements at a Council meeting today in Walla Walla, Washington. The Council’s Regional Technical Forum, an advisory committee of energy conservation experts, conducts an annual survey of electric utilities and reports on their conservation achievements compared to annual conservation goals in the Council’s Northwest Power Plan. The goal for 2007 was 140 megawatts, and so the achievements far exceeded the goal.

The annual survey reports conservation achievements by sectors — residential, commercial, industrial, agriculture/irrigation, and low-income weatherization. The 2007 survey included results from more than 80 electric utilities collectively representing 86 percent of the region’s electricity demand.

The largest savings were in the residential sector, and the largest contribution to that savings — 60 percent of the residential savings — was sales of compact fluorescent light bulbs. Between 18.5 and 19 million were sold in the Northwest last year — more than any other region of the United States in terms of bulbs per person. Northwest sales comprised about 6.6 percent of total national sales, which totaled about 290 million bulbs last year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Nineteen million compact fluorescent bulbs will reduce electricity consumption by about 75 megawatts per year, compared to the same number of 60-watt incandescent bulbs. That is enough electricity for a city the size of Port Angeles, Washington, or Idaho Falls, Idaho — approximately 55,000 people. It also is equal to the average annual output of 170 1.5-megawatt wind turbines — the size of most wind turbines now in use.

The Council is an agency of the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington and is directed by the Northwest Power Act of 1980 to prepare a program to protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife of the Columbia River Basin affected by hydropower dams while also assuring the region an adequate, efficient, economical and reliable power supply.

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