Utilities Seek to Add Incentives to New Push for Conservation
If the state’s largest private electric companies have their way, they’ll be contacting you in the next several weeks, preaching about conservation and offering you money--if only you’ll buy energy-efficient products.
They have asked the California Public Utilities Commission to ease a raft of cumbersome regulations that they believe keep them from reaching consumers and persuading them to change their behavior. The commission could vote on the matter as soon as Friday.
Pacific Gas & Electric is mulling rebates of $50 to $75 for people who buy Energy Star-rated air conditioners, and 5 cents to 10 cents per square foot for attic insulation.
Utility officials know that saving power is unnatural behavior in a state filled with heated pools and halogen lamps. But they also recognize that conservation has suddenly become a fashionable issue as Californians gird for more rolling blackouts and predictions of additional chaos this summer.
The message that they want to get across is that small actions create great savings.
“If one in 10 Californians installed three compact fluorescent [lightbulbs] in the place of incandescents, we’d have 500 megawatts less of demand at any time. That’s a power plant,” said Steven J. McCarty, PG&E;’s director of customer energy management.
But even if the utilities are given freer rein by the PUC, they face serious hurdles in preaching conservation to a state as varied as California. Low-income residents, renters and well-heeled homeowners, for example, have to be persuaded in far different fashions.
“Consumption is at the bottom of the energy crisis. On TV, they’re telling people how to turn their computers off, but poor people don’t have them,” said John Gamboa, executive director of the Greenlining Institute, who argues that lower-income residents already shut off lights and wash full loads of laundry--but many can’t afford to replace inefficient refrigerators.
Nearly two weeks ago, PUC President Loretta Lynch exhorted the utilities to go after every megawatt of energy savings possible. The utilities responded by asking for more flexibility--for example, in the way they create consumer incentives.
In anticipation of PUC approval, PG&E;, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric have been intensifying their efforts to teach energy efficiency to their customers.
Since Friday, PG&E; staffers have come up with a list of rebates. They want to address the types of items for which they currently give customers vouchers, which are then passed along to contractors as partial payment. (This doesn’t apply to do-it-yourselfers.)
PG&E; and Edison are also considering rebates for people who buy subcompact fluorescent lightbulbs to replace regular incandescent bulbs. Such fluorescents are more expensive but can last seven times longer than incandescents and save money and energy in the long run. But saving in the long run is a tough sell.
“We need to get the lightbulbs into their hands, in some cases giving them away to the low-income consumer,” said Gene Rodrigues, director of energy efficiency for Edison, “in other cases, giving big rebates to consumers so that buying compact fluorescent bulbs will be cheaper.”
Energy conservation is nothing new. California has been working on it for 20 years, and a Rand Corp. study released last March showed that, in the last two decades, conservation efforts added $1,000 per capita to the state’s economy.
“We already have the most energy-efficient new buildings and equipment in the country, and we can do much more,” said Ralph Cavanagh, energy program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The utility initiatives are a crucial part of that.”
Low-income residents can be among the most difficult constituency for the utilities to reach. Although they are already the target of special outreach programs--from free weatherstripping of doors to subsidized utility bills--the power companies have a spotty record in helping them.
PG&E; figures that it reaches only 40% of the ratepayers who are eligible for a program called California Alternative Rates for Energy, or CARE, which gives a 15% break on power bills to people living at 150% or less of the federal poverty rate. SoCal Edison reaches 63%.
To be eligible, a family of four must earn no more than $25,800 a year. Those enrolled in the program are also exempt from the current rate increases for electricity. Low-income customers are also eligible for free energy audits of their homes by utility representatives, who then can recommend some repairs paid for by the energy company.
Kirsten Stacey, manager of PG&E;’s low-income energy management program, notes that enrollment in CARE has increased 25% in the last year. But she says that language, cultural barriers and access problems are daunting.
At an energy conservation summit last Friday, advocates for poor people complained that the utilities need to do more to reach the disadvantaged and to offer help and suggestions that mesh with their lives.
Christy Piper of Santa Rosa would love to replace her dishwasher and electric stove: Their retro color, ‘70s harvest gold, screams out their age. But she has suffered from serious health problems for five years and is unable to work. The only way she figures she can afford such an upgrade is by refinancing her home.
Richard Raygoza, an energy specialist under contract with PG&E;, toured Piper’s ranch house Tuesday and recommended that the utility change her weatherstripping, install compact fluorescent bulbs and caulk windows.
“We’re paying $150-something,” Piper said, in awe. “We’re turning the heat down and trying to turn the lights off, and it still keeps going up, and our income is flat right now.”
Renters are in a different quandary, often paying their own energy bills but having no control over what kind of appliances landlords install in their homes. When landlords don’t pay for the power in their properties, they have little impetus to tear out energy-hogging refrigerators and replace them with energy-efficient appliances. The utilities call it a problem of “split incentives,” and it’s tough to overcome.
San Franciscan Chris Moseman already does the basics of conservation: He watches less television and often burns candles in his four-bedroom Castro apartment. But with his inefficient steam heaters and spotty insulation, he loses money through soaring utility bills as fast as he loses heat. Calls to his landlord have fallen on deaf ears, he said.
“If you’re a renter in this city, your options in saving energy are pretty limited,” said Moseman, a Kinko’s employee whose neighborhood was hit by last week’s blackout. “Landlords have no incentive to make energy-related repairs. With rent control, most believe they should be getting lots more for their place and are in no mood to bargain.”
Tenants’ rights groups reluctantly agree that renters have little legal recourse to move landlords to make energy-saving improvements. Lauren Saunders, a housing attorney for Bet Tzedek Legal Services in Los Angeles, said the burden is on tenants to show that defective appliances or lack of insulation pose a health and safety hazard.
“It’s a tough one,” said Saunders. “We’ve had complaints from tenants who say their utility bills have shot up because of leaky refrigerators, lousy insulation and the like.”
In contrast, well-heeled homeowners who can afford an increase in electricity bills and the jump in unregulated gas prices need to be convinced that saving energy is valuable and necessary.
Daniel Wilkinson, a 26-year-old software engineer who just bought his first house in San Francisco, says he’s only so willing to listen to any energy-saving tips from the state’s utilities.
The way Wilkinson sees it, he didn’t create the crisis--it was bad decision-making on the part of the state and the utilities to deregulate a volatile industry.
“So now I don’t really trust them to tell me how to save energy,” he said. “I’m not a wasteful person. But let me tell you, if I need to use something and I want it, I’m going to use it, no matter what the utilities tell me.”
