Full Power

Posted on February 13, 2009 by Peter L. Gray

Not since Jimmy Carter donned a sweater and put solar panels on the White House has energy efficiency become such a hot topic in Washington DC. That’s because anyone cares about the climate change debate consuming the capital understands that energy efficiency is the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the economy.

With that in mind, look for more and more companies and governments to start talking about electricity productivity. That’s the amount of bang one gets for their power.

The Rocky Mountain Institute is out this week with a new report examining how effectively the 50 states are using the power they consume. RMI measures electric productivity by taking a state’s GDP and dividing it by the number of kilowatt-hours consumed.

Here are the five states RMI puts on top:

  1. New York (7.18 $GDP/kWh)
  2. Alaska (6.65 $GDP/kWh)
  3. Connecticut (5.87 $GDP/kWh)
  4. Delaware (6.27 $GDP/kWh)
  5. California (6.27 $GDP/kWh)

And the five biggest laggards:

  1. Mississippi (2.15 $GDP/kWh)
  2. Kentucky (2.25 $GDP/kWh)
  3. Alabama (2.29 $GDP/kWh)
  4. South Carolina (2.29 $GDP/kWh)
  5. Idaho (2.30 $GDP/kWh)

I do wonder whether RMI’s model runs the danger of being too simplistic.

Of course New York - with its massive income-producing financial sector (at least prior to the meltdown) comes out on top. It generates massive revenue while the power demands are basically computers, HVAC and limos. Not quite the same ratio yielded when one divides the value of refined petroleum by the powers needs of a Mississippi oil refinery, right? But that tells you very little about what state is really more energy efficient. The bankers could leave the AC on all night with the windows open in NYC and still come out on top.

The study attempts to correct for the differences in the mix of industry, but I question whether that would adequately adjust for the differences between states. 

Nevertheless, RMI’s basic point holds: If all of the states pursued more energy efficiency efforts, RMI estimates, the United States would reduce demand for energy by about 1.2 million gigawatt hours. That would cut the nation’s demand – and the resulting emissions – from the electricity sector by a third.
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