Ohio's energy efficiency programs, now frozen by state lawmakers, were working, power companies told state regulators.
The price of household LED bulbs is falling. Philips Lighting is now selling an 8.5 watt LED bulb that produces as much light as an old-fashioned 60-watt incandescent bulb. The bulbs comes in a two-pack and is sold at Home Depot for $4.97. Life expectancy is 10 years. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Ohio's electric companies were on course to help their customers cut overall power use by as much as one-third in coming years before lawmakers froze state energy efficiency mandates.
Filed and forgotten at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, the analyses and projections were drawn up by FirstEnergy, AEP Ohio, Duke Energy and Dayton Power & Light.
Now, a nationally recognized group that advocates energy efficiency has taken another look at the utility reports in the PUCO's files.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, or ACEEE, Wednesday issued its own report, a white paper making the case for a return of the state standards, based on those utility projections.
The four companies were asked to figure out how much power their efficiency programs could help customers save over 10 to 20 years.
Each utility projected the savings in at least two ways -- maximum achievable, without consideration of the cost of the programs, and what could be achieved with "cost effective" programs, meaning the savings in using less electricity would be greater than the costs of the programs.
The reports were available to the public and mentioned at times by efficiency advocates in testimony to state lawmakers who wanted to kill the efficiency programs. The utilities never testified.
But lawmakers either ignored or dismissed references to the utility studies during the months of hearings before approving S.B. 310, the legislation that has frozen Ohio's efficiency mandates for two years.
While the new analysis is the work of analysts employed by the ACEEE, which is a non-profit, funding for the report came in part from the Environmental Law and Policy Center and Natural Resources Defense Council, two groups that argued for keeping the mandates. Both opposed the freeze.
The ACEEE paper concludes "there is huge potential in Ohio to save families and businesses money on their utility bills through energy saving programs."
And in a statement accompanying the report, the ACEEE points out that the most recent study done by AEP Ohio indicated the company's planned programs could have easily, and cost effectively, met the annually increasing efficiency savings mandated by the law.
The utility company projections were required by law, but were filed at different times because each utility launched its efficiency programs at different times.
AEP Ohio did a study in March 2014, according to the ACEEE report, that concluded its programs could enable its customers to use 66 percent less electricity -- as a percentage of the company's total sales -- at the end of a 20-year period ending in 2034 -- if money were no object.
AEP wrote that its less expensive and therefore cost effective efficiency programs would help its customers use 37 percent less power in the best case but at at least 24 percent with a less aggressive program.
"Overall, of all four energy efficiency potential studies, the AEP study provides the most thorough analysis and reasonable projection that Ohio has sufficient efficiency potential to meet the targets set by [the law as approved in 2008]," the ACEEE analysts concluded.
FirstEnergy's study was the oldest.
Done in June 2012 for a 15-year period of time out to 2026, the report projected a 33 percent reduction in energy use at the end of the period, using programs in which cost was not a consideration.
FirstEnergy projected that its cost-effective programs could achieve a reduction in power use between 11 percent and 17 percent at the end of 15 years.
"The achievable potential assessment includes a base-case and high-case scenario using different levels of customer incentive payments," the ACEEE analysis noted.
"The achievable potential assessment for its high-case assumptions in 2026 finds cumulative electricity savings of 16.8% for Ohio Edison, 13.1% for Toledo Edison, and 16.3% for Cleveland Electric Illuminating."
The report also noted that the cost of some technologies is falling rapidly, for example the price of LED light bulbs has plummeted 85 percent in just five years. FirstEnergy did not appear to have included projections about LED use, the report said.
But the steadily falling prices of LED bulbs mean that customers can now spend less money than they once did in order to use less electricity on lighting -- making success at overall reductions that much easier, the report argues.
Other rapidly changing technologies, while still too expensive, will at some point be cheap enough to be included in utility programs, the paper argues, citing the availability now of "smart" thermostats that will probably come down in price as one example.
The release of the ACEEE paper comes just weeks before the special committee of lawmakers reviewing the efficiency freeze must recommend whether to permanently eliminate state energy-efficiency mandates or resurrect them in some form.
Samantha Williams, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which helped fund the study, said copies of the paper are on the way to members of the legislative study committee, to the utilities, and to the members of the PUCO and to the Kasich administration.