The energy efficiency challenge: Save the baby throw out the bathwater
In the more competitive, restructured industry that is emerging, electricity providers will need to build on what has been learned about DSM in the past 15 years, focusing on providing information and technical services, reducing customer risk through guarantees, and solving customer financing problems. Efficiency solutions that make sense for each customer may be the only ones that get used. Over the last 15 years, electric utilities have spent billions of dollars on demand-side management activities. The Energy Information Administration reports that utilites spent $2.8 billion on DSM in 1993 alone. Through these programs, utilites claim to have saved 40,000 MW of demand and 44,000 GWh of energy, and millions of participating customers have saved billions of dollars. But the development and implementation of these programs have not been without controversy. For the past 15 years, DSM`s advocates and critics have debated the most fundamental aspects of the selection and evaluation of DSM activities. Although protagonists have argued their views within the context of monopoly regulation, it has become apparent in recent years that the basic structure of the industry is undergoing fundamental change. Today, the debate regarding the role of DSM and, more gnerally, the provision of efficiency services to utility customers continues. Here the authors seek to summarize the important lessons learned and to suggest the changes that these lessons imply for DSM activities.
- OSTI ID:
- 376991
- Journal Information:
- Electricity Journal, Vol. 8, Issue 10; Other Information: PBD: Dec 1995
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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