Recently in Energy efficiency Category

For conservationists, it's a pretty picture: California just became the first state to adopt energy-efficiency standards for televisions.

Needless to say, TV makers are giving the new rules a bad reception.

Under the policy adopted by the California Energy Commission on Wednesday, all new 42-inch TV sets sold after January 1, 2011, must use less than 183 watts; by 2013, that drops to 116 watts. By comparison, according to the CEC, a 42-inch plasma TV sold in 2007 uses about 313 watts, while a 42-inch LDC set uses 232 watts.

Senators from California and Massachusetts are leading the climate-bill effort. At least so far, it is named for them: the Boxer-Kerry bill. Or Kerry-Boxer. Depends on who's talking. It is surely no coincidence that the two states are energy efficiency leaders, and now the rivalry (if indeed they have competitive streaks) has gotten a bit more interesting.

Senator John Kerry's state, Massachusetts, has just enacted a plan to spend more than twice as much per capita as famously energy-conservationist California on energy-saving initiatives. California will still spend a lot more, because it's so much bigger, but Massachusetts will outspend it per person, the state Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs said.

Barclays Capital says power demand has dropped this year for residential and commercial consumers for the first time since complete national data about it became available in 1973.

"There used to be one reassuring maxim in the power industry," a Barclays commodities research report says. "Residential and commercial power consumption grows through good times and bad." But this bad time is unlike all the others.

Our colleague Mark Watson reports that some industry experts see the stressful economy as the main reason; their consumption will go back to previous levels once money is not such a problem. Others think "green" consciousness and energy-efficient products are producing a more permanent effect.

Should one admit this? Some of us have pretty clear, and fond, memories of something called S&H Green Stamps. Our mothers would get sheets of them for purchases at the supermarket, and we would spend stupid amounts of time licking them and pasting them into S&H booklets. We would then go to the Green Stamps redemption store and buy something glamorous because it was "free": a toaster, a mixer, maybe a vacuum cleaner if you saved up a big stack.

Not everyone would agree, but part of the charm was the labor of licking and pasting, and the tactile satisfaction of the fat little books piling up in a corner. "Virtual" collecting may be as satisfying to many, and it's that notion driving the idea for a green stamp program in Connecticut -- aimed at helping people buy energy efficient appliances and products.

Sell me light-hours, cooling hours and water-heating hours. But don't sell me kilowatt-hours. If I took Peter Fox-Penner's advice, that's what I would tell my electric company.

And if utilities took his advice, that's what they would do. Roger Sant, who founded AES, proposed the idea in 1980, Fox-Penner, of the Brattle Group, recalls in a paper, and Thomas Edison's business started out that way: as an energy services company. Only later did it switch to selling only the kilowatt-hours, and leaving the electric appliances to others.

In 1980, the time was not right. But Fox-Penner sees its moment coming.

The National Research Council wants the Department of Energy to undertake something tough: Instead of setting new efficiency standards for 15 or so appliances in the traditional way, DOE should take into account all the emissions and inefficiencies of the fuels and processes used to run the appliances.

Whew. First of all, DOE is having to get cracking even to tackle the traditional approach. It's already years late in issuing more stringent standards and has agreed to deadlines for doing so. President Barack Obama asked the department in February to finalize five of them as quickly as possible; these are standards that face deadlines before August 8, for ovens, microwaves, air conditioning units and more.

PSEG Group's chief executive, Ralph Izzo, persists in his belief that an electric utility can be something different from what it's been before. Whether he succeeds in persuading New Jersey regulators and policymakers that his newest idea deserves backing, who knows? But it's pretty inviting at first blush.

Don't leave it to me, the homeowner, to get around to replacing my refrigerator and my air conditioner, my light bulbs and everything else with more efficient ones, Izzo proposes. Make it the utility's job, the utility's business.

Google's splashy entry into the smart grid space (not to be completed until later this year, actually) puts a new dimension to a field where companies have been laboring pretty obscurely for a long time. Taking the software directly to the people, for free, could make a big difference in power-consumption behavior.

So just how much television are people watching in California? Apparently enough to put an undue strain on the electric grid, according to energy regulators in the Golden State.

While California's Legislature and governor are proposing dramatic fuel-efficiency measures to help cut emissions from the millions upon millions of cars on the road, the California Energy Commission is taking its energy-efficiency initiative to the family living room, where it says TVs -- in the era of the 60-inch plasma flat screen -- account for up to 10% of people's electric bills. And all of that American Idol, CSI and Days of Our Lives is driving up power costs for everyone while creating more pollution, the CEC insists.