July 3, 2008

Below are a few letters we received on topics that appeared in the past few weeks. They capture the essence of how many readers say they feel.

July 2, 2008

Utilities are now in the heat of battle. While they would like to maximize their sales, they must now persuade their customers to save energy. It's a quest that will help defer investments in expensive and contentious infrastructure and in doing so, prevent the release of some harmful emissions.

Instead of investing millions in power plants to meet the 100 or so hours a year when energy demand is highest, utilities are turning to their customers to reduce energy usage during these peak hours. Demand response is giving commercial and industrial concerns more insight into the energy that their facilities consume. By knowing this, they can consume power during those times that are most favorable to the utilities' rate structure.

Energy Efficiency Boom Makes Big Impact on U.S. Efficiency and Creates Jobs, But Remains a Relatively Untapped Resource

It's the U.S. energy boom that no one knows about: Energy efficiency may be the farthest-reaching, least-polluting, and fastest-growing energy success story of the last 50 years. But it also is the most invisible, the least understood, and in serious danger of missing out on needed future investments.

In the first attempt to quantify the overall impact of the hidden U.S. energy efficiency boom, a major new report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) shows that U.S. energy consumption (as measured per dollar of economic output) will have been slashed by the end of 2008 to half of what it was in 1970.

June 27, 2008

Talk of the graying utility workforce is starting to get old. Now the language is focused more on pending opportunities -- the need to fill futuristic energy jobs.

It's a critical period in the utility sector. Investment in infrastructure and new technologies has been lagging but is expected to catapult in the coming years. That type of capital influx is now increasingly driven by environmental regulations, necessitating the development of clean generation and smart grid technologies that create energy efficiencies. But labor shortages are looming that could lead to project delays.