Last year electricity consumers in the Pacific Northwest set a record for efficiency gains, according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
The one-year, energy-conservation achievement in 2007 amounts to reduced electricity use of 200 average megawatts (MW), or 1,750 million kilowatt-hours–enough electricity for approximately 146,000 Northwest homes, or equivalent to about half of the typical annual growth in electricity use in the Northwest.
The record one-year gain in 2007 adds to the region’s total energy-efficiency achievement since 1978, which now stands at 3,700 average megawatts. As electricity generation, that is more than enough power for all of Idaho and western Montana combined.
The Northwest Power Act of 1980 made energy conservation the highest-priority resource to meet rising demand for power in the Pacific Northwest. Then, as now, the cost of improving the efficiency of electricity use is two to three times less expensive than the cost of building new power plants fueled by natural gas or coal.
Bill Booth, chairman of the Council, said, "Home owners and businesses are deciding to use electricity more efficiently, and this has the effect of lowering power bills and also helping the environment."
Besides electricity consumers, there were many contributors to the record-setting efficiency gain in 2007, the Council said. These include electric utilities and the Bonneville Power Administration, which offered incentives to their customers; the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, which is working to improve national energy-efficiency standards for major appliances like clothes washers and dish washers; and state and federal governments, which are implementing codes with stronger energy-efficiency requirements.
The largest savings were in the residential sector, and the largest contribution to that savings–60% of the residential savings–was sales of compact fluorescent light bulbs. Between 18.5 and 19 million were sold in the Northwest last year–more than any other region of the United States in terms of bulbs per person. Northwest sales comprised about 6.6% of total national sales, which totaled about 290 million bulbs last year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Council is an agency of the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington and is directed by the Northwest Power Act of 1980 to prepare a program to protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife of the Columbia River Basin affected by hydropower dams while also assuring the region an adequate, efficient, economical and reliable power supply.