Why the credit crunch shouldn’t take our eye off the energy-efficiency ball
There’s a tendency during times of economic trouble to cast eco-friendly policies as risky, expensive, dangerous and reckless, and this is exactly what Prime Minister Stephen Harper did in the lead-up to last week’s Canadian federal election. Thanks to the effectiveness of the media soundbite, it worked. The public got scared, embraced the “steady as she goes” line, and pretty much derailed any hope of serious federal action on climate change and clean-technology development (beyond carbon capture for use in enhanced oil recovery). Fortunately, Canadian provinces are picking up a lot of the slack.
Still, it would be good for provincial officials to read a new study out of the University of California, Berkeley, which found that aggressive energy-efficiency policies embraced by California between 1977 and 2007 created nearly 1.5 million jobs, far outstripping the 25,000 jobs such policies eliminated (hat tip to Joe Romm for the tip at Climate Progress, where he provides his own take on the study).
The New York Times also has a good story on the study here. It basically concludes that energy-efficiency programs helped consumers lower their electricity bills, which in turn led to the flow of more dollars into other products, such as groceries and new appliances. That created jobs at retailers, wholesalers, food processors and other businesses in the supply chain. The study’s author, economics professor David Roland-Holst, found that even though electricity rates had to be increased to pay for the programs the decrease in per-capita electricity demand still resulted in overall savings. Much of the economic growth created in the state was driven by stringent efficiency standards for large appliances, like air conditioners and fridges, and for homes and commercial buildings.
As Thomas Friedman writes in his new book Hot, Flat and Crowded, hype and celebrity may draw attention to green issues, “But they make a difference only if they are followed up by ‘revolutionary bureaucrats’ — men and women who write emissions and efficiency standards, and who, with the flick of a pen, can change how much electricity 50 million air conditioners consume or how much diesel a thousand locomotives guzzle in one year.” Friedman adds: “The more boring the work, the more revolutionary its impact.”
It’s something we all have to remember as we are tempted, amid a global financial crisis, to run and hide from necessary change. It’s not that bad, really. If you keep an open mind, you might come to realize that, hey, such policies are pretty damn smart. Provincial officials need to keep this in mind as their feet get cold.
Tags: california, energy efficiency
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Tyler – great post. The job creation result of implementing renewables and particularly community-power are incredible. It would be an interesting comparison between a generation plan with conservation/renewables/community power as priorty against the nuclear priority plan when doing a full accounting of jobs, emissions, distribution etc.
Certainly some interesting decisions and opportunities ahead of the province right now. I have a feeling the economic downturn may actually help the renewables agenda.
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:41 am
I don’t want to be down on the benefits of energy-efficiency, which by all means I’m behind, but it does strike me that California may not be the optimum state to look to with its history of ineffective energy management, high power-import dependence and rolling blackouts.
And expecting efficiency to solve energy problems has its own pitfalls. The classic paradox of better fuel economy actually leading to *increased* fuel consumption overall (because people drove more often knowing they were getting better mileage for their money) is still relevant, I think. For example, the study claims a 40% reduction in *per capita* electricity usage below national average over the past 35 years — but completely fails to mention that over those same 35 years California’s population nearly *doubled,* growing from 20 million to over 35 million, making it the most populated state and the 13th-fastest growing population in the USA. 40% per capita reduction is nothing to sneeze at, but what it ultimately means is that power demand, instead of doubling with the population, only increased by 60% rather than 100%. Likewise, creating 1.5 million jobs is great, but over 35 years that’s only about 43,000 jobs per year — again, better than the alternative, but far from the magic bullet it may be touted as.
It’s not so much these realities that bug me — I fully accept that there is no magic bullet and that increased efficiency is overall a good thing. It’s the careful omission of such very simple data as, say, population growth, to put per capita rates in context, or the ratio of imported power vs. domestically produced power and whether the proposed measures will require overall increases in imported power (which may not have the same restrictions), that rubs me the wrong way. It feels too much like selective data massaging, and sustainability advocacy’s already suffered too much from that.