Industry News

Boston — Budgets for ratepayer funded energy efficiency programs in the United States and Canada topped a record six billion dollars for 2009, illustrating the ongoing and growing support for energy savings and environmental benefits at the state and provincial level. Utility funding increased 35% over the $4.5 billion committed in 2008. Not including onetime U.S. stimulus funding directed to energy efficiency, the U.S. totaled $5.3 billion, doubling from $2.6 billion in 2006. Eight Canadian provinces together reached $800 million, a small reduction from 2008, but showing growth from the 2007 total of $600 million.

Gas programs demonstrated the most rapid expansion, soaring 274 percent since 2006 and increasing nearly 80 percent over 2008 in the United States. Canadian gas programs rose 25 percent on top of a 39 percent rise in 2008. Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE) members administer 89 percent of U.S. gas budgets and 74 percent of Canadian budgets.

Electric budgets in the United States went from a 21 percent increase in 2008 over 2007 to a whopping 37 percent over 2008. CEE members administer 88 percent of U.S. electric budgets reported; Canadian members administer 94 percent. The largest gains were from southeast and south central states, regions that grew more than 76 percent. While most provinces in Canada reported either increases or first time budgets for electric efficiency, decreases in program spending in Ontario and low efficiency loan activity in New Brunswick, both due to the economic downturn, meant a slight decrease in Canada overall to just under $0.7 billion USD.

Impacts measured by CEE members showed savings of 93,000 GWh of electricity and more than 343 million therms of gas, avoiding more than 55 million metric tons of CO2. The carbon dioxide emissions avoided by CEE member efforts in 2008 are equivalent to the annual emissions from nearly 12 coal-fired power plants-more than two percent of the output of all coal-fired power plants in the United States in 2005. Based on the average retail price of electricity and gas in 2008, the combined utility bill savings for consumers delivered by CEE member programs in that year climbed to more than $8.4 billion USD.

Data were collected from 46 states, up from 37 in 2008, and from eight provinces. Working with the American Gas Association and the Institute for Electric Efficiency for the first time, CEE has completed collection of budget and impact data from ratepayer funded energy efficiency programs and plans to make detailed analysis of the data along with our Annual Industry Report available early in 2010. New this year is the collection of expenditure data for 2008, which showed that these programs are spending their allocated budgets.