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Saving Energy may Save Us All by Lance Robertson The Register-Guard - January 7, 2001

The image is seared into the brains of nearly everyone old enough to remember it.

The year: 1979. President Carter addressed the nation wearing that boring brown sweater. A cozy fire burned brightly in the background.

His message: Conserve.

And we did, for awhile - helped by billions of dollars from government agencies and utilities to weatherize our homes, wrap our pipes and install solar water heaters.

But what's happened to conservation? In the new millennium, with the Northwest freaking out over skyrocketing electricity prices and the threat of blackouts during cold snaps, energy conservation has taken a back seat in the public consciousness.

Instead, many utilities and politicians are talking about temporary power curtailments, or how many new power plants we need to bring online in a hurry to serve the region's rapid population growth and booming economy.

With few notable exceptions - the public utilities serving Eugene and Springfield, for example - most utilities sharply curtailed spending for conservation or eliminated programs altogether in the late 1990s.

"Conservation just seemed to drop off the planet," said John Harrison, a spokesman for the Northwest Power Planning Council, the agency charged with making sure utilities follow a 1980 law calling for conservation and development of renewable energy sources.

To conservation proponents, finding ways to use less electricity is the true missing link that could soften rate hikes for consumers - or eliminate the effect on the pocketbook altogether. Every megawatt saved is a megawatt that doesn't need to be added to the supply by building expensive power plants or buying high-priced electricity on the open market, they say.

The planning council estimated in an October report that there's at least 1,500 megawatts of electricity waiting to be saved out there.

That's equal to the amount of generating capacity currently under construction in the region, and enough electricity to power almost five cities the size of Eugene.

But the same report said conservation programs had fallen woefully behind the need during the late 1990s.

"Conservation programs just got slashed," said John Pyrch, conservation director for the federal Bonneville Power Administration.

Had those programs not been cut, the energy supply crisis might have been averted, said Mark Glyde of the Northwest Energy Coalition, which promotes conservation and development of renewable energy resources.

Glyde's group estimates that in Washington state alone, the need for an additional 330 megawatts of power today could have been avoided had utilities kept up on conservation program spending. Washington accounts for about half the region's spending on conservation, he said. No solid figures were available for Oregon.

The BPA, which supplies the Northwest with almost half its electricity, first beefed up conservation programs in the 1980s, then slashed funding to the bone in the late 1990s.

One reason was that the agency, burdened by debt from failed nuclear power plants and other budget problems, no longer was a low-cost provider; local utilities cut their dependence on BPA power and signed contracts with other suppliers.

Other reasons: In the 1990s, natural gas-fueled turbines made it possible for utilities to build new plants more cheaply and quickly. Deregulation promised to lower rates for utilities and customers. No one worried when power was cheap and looked like it was going to get cheaper.

"The market was pushing utilities to do just the opposite of conservation - generate and sell," Harrison says. "The idea was to sell at the lowest cost, not conserve."

Now everyone knows those predictions about lower energy costs were wrong. The entire West Coast faces a problem of too much demand for the available supply.

At its peak in 1983, the BPA gave $210 million to local utilities for weatherization and other conservation programs.

The money helped the Eugene Water & Electric Board, for example, weatherize about 80 percent of the existing homes with added insulation, double-paned windows and the like.

But by 1999 the federal agency was spending only about $35 million on conservation programs. EWEB saw its share drop to $300,000 last year from a peak of $6.8 million in 1982.

The BPA left it up to local utilities to fund their own conservation programs and most didn't make up the difference. Funding at many utilities now is around 1 percent of revenues.

There are exceptions and EWEB is one. It spends 5 percent of gross electric revenues on conservation programs. The Springfield Utility Board spends about 3 percent on conservation.

EWEB says that just last year it reduced the need to buy additional power by 2 megawatts, which can now cost $2 million or more to buy on the open market.

Each 1 percent reduction through conservation can cut the need for a rate hike by the same percentage, officials say. EWEB is considering a 15 percent rate hike this year.

In recent years utilities have shifted the focus of their energy conservation efforts to commercial and industrial customers, trying to persuade them to cut indoor lighting and trade old motors or heating systems for more energy-efficient ones.

Home conservation programs are still alive. Even though most homes are weatherized, utilities are spending money on lighting, energy-efficient heating systems and installing more accurate thermostats to better regulate heat output.

Energy conservation remains a tough sell for many people because electricity rates in Springfield and Eugene remain relatively low, says Deanna Solomon, SUB's conservation coordinator.

But the West's newest energy crisis has people talking about conservation again. And nothing motivates people more than seeing the price of electricity go up, EWEB spokesman John Mitchell says, noting, "One of the strongest incentives for conservation is saving money."

Even the BPA is renewing its conservation efforts. Beginning in October, it will give utilities that buy its power a slight break on rates if they spend the savings on conservation.

The BPA also plans to spend about $200 million over the next five years on conservation, plus another $40 million helping to develop energy-saving devices for appliances and machinery. But the days when the agency was the sugar daddy for conservation programs is likely over, Pyrch says.

"The challenge for us is to figure out how to ramp up conservation without Bonneville being the deep pocket for funding," he says.

Oregon's electricity deregulation law also takes effect in October. It will require many utilities to spend at least 3 percent of revenues on "public purposes," which include conservation and renewable energy sources.

"The silver lining in all these rate increases and lack of generating capacity is, it gives us the opportunity to do the right thing," says Harrison, of the Northwest Power Planning Council, "which is to invest more in conservation and renewables.''