Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
6/13/2014
One of the expected benefits of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new proposed emissions regulations for existing power plants is increased energy efficiency, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said this week at an event in Washington hosted by the U.S. Energy Association and Johnson Controls. The proposed regulations are comprised of four “building blocks,” which include efficiency measures at plants and demand-side. McCarthy reiterated in her remarks this week that the EPA anticipates that energy efficiency opportunities could reduce the average electric bill by 8 percent. “In the end, our proposal is going to actually reduce consumer bills by 2030. Now, many people will go, ‘How is that possible?’ Now can we all tell them what the answer is—energy efficiency,” she said.
The rationale for this claim, McCarthy said, is that getting waste out of the system will create cleaner, more efficient, cheaper energy. “There will be sceptics, I’m sure there will, but when we looked at the reductions that were available, we looked at all kinds of things, including renewables and low carbon technologies that are opportunities that are on the ground that states are doing already,” she said.
“Frankly, when we looked at it, what we really began to realize was the value of efficiency and not just efficiency at the facilities that are generating electricity but the demand-side efficiencies that can be brought to the table. The biggest bang for the buck, by far, take a look at this rule, is efficiency. It’s getting the waste out of the system from the power plant to the plugs.”
This emphasis on efficiency—both demand-side and at the plants—will be key in pushing innovation and creating jobs moving forward, McCarthy said. “It’s energy efficiency that is the poster child for turning the risks that we’re all worried about in a changing climate into business opportunity and that business opportunity is what is going to deliver the consumers we care about and that public that we’re here to serve into believers on what we’re trying to do on climate change,” she said. “That’s how we’re going to get the kind of energy we need across the country that is really going to turn this risk into opportunities. I think we’re going to help energy efficiency and renewable energy get the kind of private invest that we know it’s deserved for a very long time and that investment is going to spark innovation and new technologies that are going to allow us to go further and further not just as a country, but in each and every state, to grow jobs and build our economy and really turn towards an energy future that we all can be proud to leave our children.”
