Energy Conservation Back on Front Burner

With an urgency reminiscent of the 1970s oil crisis, California is being nudged into an era of energy efficiency in which energy-guzzling light bulbs and window glass will be upstaged by remarkable new conservation-oriented products.

Armed with compelling evidence that California utilities have led a return to energy gluttony, a coalition of regulators, scientists, businesses, conservationists--and even the reluctant utilities themselves--is preparing a blueprint for changing the way energy is used.

The effort, spurred by an unusually outspoken California Public Utilities Commission, could position California to catch up with energy-conscious Japan, reduce fossil fuel pollutants from power plants, better respond to fears over global warming and save Californians billions of dollars in needlessly high energy bills.

“Just so the utilities know where we stand, conservation and (energy-efficient) management are now back up on the front burner,” said PUC President G. Mitchell Wilk.

If the effort succeeds, Californians will be offered an array of proven--but thus far ignored--1980s technology, such as light bulbs that last for years using a fraction of the normal energy and window glass that repels summertime heat. Instead of seeking out new power sources, the utilities will hire firms peddling “negawatts”--ways to cut energy use.

The powerful PUC took up the issue July 20 after release of a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the group that successfully fought the use of the chemical Alar on apples, showing that the state’s big utilities have cut conservation programs by 56% since 1985. California, once the nation’s conservation leader, has backslid so badly that an estimated $1 billion in energy is being wasted annually, the group said.

Stanley W. Hulett, a PUC member, asked for “a blueprint for energy efficiency” by Christmas and chided the utilities, whose executives in the mid-1980s decided that plentiful energy justified dismantling many efficiency programs. Laudable past gains, Hulett said, “do not excuse what we have done in the last three to four years.”

Arthur Rosenfeld, a leading physicist and energy expert at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, called the PUC’s stand “historic.”

“The commissioners were telling us they were embarrassed that they were asleep at the wheel,” he said. “And that means change is coming.”

The breadth of the problem has also prompted the California Energy Commission and South Coast Air Quality Management District to urge a turnaround.

With such a broad consensus, prominent scientists and industry executives said firms selling energy-efficient equipment and techniques could become California’s hottest new growth industry.

“The savings achievable are so dramatic that many people simply don’t believe it,” said Amory Lovins, a Colorado conservation expert whose state-of-the-art home and office in the frigid Rocky Mountains generates only $5 in monthly energy bills. The alterations paid for themselves in one year, he said.

Lovins said screw-in “compact fluorescent bulbs” have the life span of 10 incandescent bulbs, use one-quarter the energy and, despite their $11.50 wholesale price, will quickly pay for themselves in a typical home. Reflectors that intensify lights without adding heat and fixtures that stop fluorescent bulbs from flickering can cut office lighting bills 50%. And because the new office lighting does not overheat rooms, air-conditioning bills are sliced in half.

Rosenfeld said “low emissivity” glass, coated with transparent film that keeps out heat, could save energy equal to all the oil pumped annually through the Alaska pipeline if installed in homes and buildings nationwide. The glass is slightly more costly than conventional windows.

“People don’t buy (the new light bulbs and other items) because they are not in Safeway,” Rosenfeld said. “The natural market will take 30 years to absorb (these products), but we don’t have that sort of classical leeway left.”

The PUC stressed that the hardware and ideas brought out in the blueprint should include incentives to spur the utilities. Moreover, the programs should pay for themselves in the form of lower bills and rebates without the sacrifices equated with old-style conservation. Industry experts said the programs, to be administered by the utilities, are likely to include:

- An end to the utilities’ traditional practice of building or expanding power plants whenever they need more megawatts. Where a moderately sized 50-megawatt plant was once required, a “negawatt’ contractor would be hired to find a way to prevent 50 megawatts of energy from being wasted in a region.

- Prodding industries and businesses to install new products ranging from cost-cutting machine gears and drive belts to the low emissivity windows and polarized plastic ceiling tiles that cut computer screen glare and allow lights to be dimmed.

- Incentives for constructing above-standard buildings. Developers still install conventional lights, windows and heaters to reduce up-front costs, creating energy-guzzling buildings. High energy costs accumulate for the life of the structures, representing billions of dollars in losses. (In downtown Los Angeles, few of the dozens of newer office towers are above standard. One exception is the high-tech Ronald Reagan State Office Building now being built.)

- Paybacks for residents who “super-weatherize” their homes by plugging unseen leaks now easily detectable with air-suction devices. Programs might pay for ceiling, wall and floor insulation, heat-repelling windows and whole-house fans instead of air-conditioners.

- Educating municipal agencies. For instance, cities can surface streets with light-colored materials, replacing heat-absorbing blacktop that, along with other man-made structures, has helped turned Los Angeles into a “heat island,” in which temperatures are rising one degree per decade.

While defending past conservation cutbacks, utility executives have agreed to collaborate on ways to adapt these ideas for California.

“We don’t have all the answers, but we’re sure the one way to get them is to work together,” said Robert H. Bridenbecker, vice president of customer service for Southern California Edison Co.

“We would not only accept but encourage proper incentives,” said Virgil Rose, vice president and general manager of distribution for Pacific Gas & Electric.

However, John Phillips, co-chairman of the Boston Edison Co. Collaborative, a group helping the Boston utility company create energy-efficiency programs, cautioned that California’s utilities may not be joining the effort out of conviction, but in response to public pressure.

On July 21, in the first of many informal meetings held to draw up the energy blueprint for the PUC, utility officials rejected the Natural Resources Defense Council’s suggestion that Phillips use his Boston experience to help them come up with a preliminary plan.

“I don’t mind being rejected, especially in this business, but the idea was to collaborate, and frankly I walked away feeling very, very uneasy about the utilities,” Phillips said. “Will they come up with anything creative, after being left to themselves all these years and coming up with a 56% cut in conservation?”

Another warning came from David Morse of the PUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates, who questioned whether the utilities should need incentives to support efficiency. Given the PUC’s unique system, in which utilities already profit whether or not they sell more or less energy, Morse said, “they shouldn’t need financial incentives to do the right thing.”

Many industry-watchers trace the utilities’ resistance to the mid-1980s when new executives rose at Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and elsewhere who seemingly had little interest in the scientific strides being made in energy efficiency.

According to Ralph Cavanagh of the Natural Resources Defense Council, top people in the conservation departments were laid off as marketing departments grew. Disillusioned conservation experts moved to out-of-state utilities, “where the action was,” he said, and soon after, conservation efforts in California began spiraling downward.

While California hesitated, West Germany and Japan bolted ahead with dramatic innovations.

Rosenfeld of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory said Japan needs just one-half the energy required by the United States to produce an equivalent one dollar of gross national product--a disparity that gives Japan a tremendous financial advantage. Aside from the apparent reluctance by the utilities, there are other challenges.

Charles R. Imbrecht, chairman of the California Energy Commission, recently told the PUC that by the year 2000 less than half of California’s housing stock will have been built according to efficiency standards adopted in 1978.

Millions of older, poorly insulated homes represent “an unsqueezed sponge” of potentially vast energy savings, Imbrecht said.

But the building industry is so disparate, with many thousands of contractors, engineers, architects and designers unaware of the new technology, that new labeling and standards may be needed on lighting, fixtures, windows and other building materials before much retrofitting occurs. Such retrofitting might occur, for instance, when houses are remodeled or resold.

Lovins and other scientists say they also still face persistent “disbelief” over new energy-saving devices that seem almost too good to be true.

“I was consulting for a company in El Segundo, and they told me: ‘But we’re already energy efficient,’ ” Lovins said. “So I pointed out that if they had (constructed) all their buildings with available technology, their worldwide net profits would go up 56%.”

Despite such hurdles, there is growing optimism that California is leaving the age of energy waste behind.

Ray Hall, a contractor who tried for years to persuade the utilities to promote super-weatherizing, recently super-weatherized an older house in La Verne for $3,000, avoiding the need for a $4,100 central air conditioner and immediately cutting the homeowner’s energy bills by 50%.

“Suddenly I’m getting calls from state legislators asking about these programs, and the other day two guys from the gas company took me out to lunch to pick my brain,” Hall said. “It’s a whole new day.”

ENERGY-SAVING TECHNOLOGIES

Chart shows how much energy could be saved in the United States if just two of several energy-efficient technologies now available were adopted nationwide. Savings are shown in net annual costs, as well as in the number of power plants whose energy production would not be needed and oil platforms whose construction could be avoided.

COMPACT FLUORESCENT LOW-EMISSIVITY LIGHTS WINDOW GLASS Number/area installed 800 million 15 billion square feet Net annual savings $6 billion $6 billion Unburned coal 30 million tons* 20 million tons* Unneeded power plants 12 (1,000 Not available megawatts/plant)** Unneeded oil platforms 30 (10,000 barrels/day 50

* 50 million tons equals 10% of coal mined in United States annually

** A 1,000-megawatt plant equals six Diablo Canyon nuclear power complexes

Source: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory