State residents challenged on energy savings

The Baltimore Sun

Gov. Martin O'Malley challenged Marylanders yesterday to cut their electric consumption at least 15 percent by 2015 and pledged that state government would lead the way by making its buildings more efficient and by tracking state energy use.

O'Malley unveiled a seven-step plan for how the state government will achieve the goal, but he gave no specifics for how businesses and individuals - who use the vast majority of the state's power - could follow suit.

However, he said that in a time of rising energy prices and increasing threats to the environment, it is necessary and possible for individuals to cut their consumption without diminishing their quality of life.

"The best fighting chance all of us have right now against this big bump in electric costs is to throw ourselves into conservation as much as we can," O'Malley said while standing on the roof of a government building covered with solar panels. "We can hit this goal."

O'Malley, a Democrat, made rising electricity costs a major theme in his campaign last fall to unseat incumbent Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. by promising to stop a 72 percent rate increase by BGE, the largest electric utility in the state.

But this spring, he was forced to concede failure as his appointees to the Public Service Commission concluded that the higher rates could not legally be overturned. Since then, consumer advocates and the governor's political opponents have levied harsh criticism on him for failing to fulfill his promise.

O'Malley said yesterday that he is exploring a variety of options for easing future increases, such as a partial re-regulation of the industry, the building of power plants and the development of renewable energy.

But in the short term, he said, conservation will be the most effective way to keep bills down. Achieving the 15 percent goal by 2015 would save consumers $1.8 billion in electric costs and would eliminate the need for two new coal-fired power plants.

"The least expensive kilowatt of electricity is the one you never have to use," O'Malley said.

Maryland Energy Administration Director Malcolm D. Woolf said his agency has posted home energy conservation tips on its Web site (www.energy.state.md. us), but he said the administration is still working on broader solutions, such as the creation of an interest-free revolving loan program that businesses and consumers could use to finance energy efficiency projects. More announcements are planned in the coming weeks, he said.

Ultimately, what could make the biggest impact is finding a way to decouple utilities' profits from the consumption of electricity, Woolf said.

Companies such as BGE no longer generate power but serve instead as delivery agents for electricity. They earn money based on the amount of power they distribute, but O'Malley and Woolf said that if the companies charged by household, not by kilowatt, their incentives would change.

Pepco Holdings, the company that supplies power in the Washington suburbs and on the Eastern Shore, has a proposal pending before the Public Service Commission to make that switch.

"Under traditional rate making, the company's interests in helping its customers use electricity efficiently would be at seeming odds with the interests of the company's shareholders, since reductions in sales would reduce revenues," Pepco Chief Financial Officer Joseph M. Rigby said in testimony before the PSC. "The [plan], which decouples the company's revenues from changes in the volume of electricity delivered to consumers, aligns the company's interests with the interests of the customer."

As proof that conservation is possible, O'Malley pointed to California, a state where per capita consumption has remained essentially flat for decades while consumption nationally and in Maryland has steadily climbed.

Claudia Chandler, the assistant executive director of the California Energy Commission, said that state's gains in efficiency have been 30 years in the making. She said the state adopted its first construction standards for energy efficiency in 1974 and for appliances in 1978, and the laws have kept pace with new technology over the years.

She said, for example, that a new California law requires more efficient chargers for appliances such as cell phones. When they're plugged in - even if the cell phone isn't charging - they continue to draw current, typically about five watts, Chandler said. In California, the new standard will be a tenth as much.

"Our data shows that most of the households in California have about 10 of these things, and they're probably all plugged in right now," she said.

andy.green@baltsun.com

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