Saving a kilowatt-hour through energy-efficiency improvements costs one-third or less than the cost of any new source of electricity supply, according to a new report from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE; Washington, D.C.).
Costs for utility-sector energy efficiency programs averaged $0.025 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) — about one-fourth to one-third the cost of new energy supplies, the report says. The ACEEE report examined data from recent energy efficiency programs in 14 U.S. states.
Energy efficiency measures are “cheaper, cleaner, faster and more easily realized” than increasing capacity with energy sources such as coal, natural gas, wind and nuclear, said Maggie Eldridge, ACEEE research associate and report coauthor, at a Sept. 23 press conference. The report points out that conventional energy supplies typically cost between $0.07 and $0.15 per kWh.
The 2009 report expands on a similar assessment of the cost of saved energy (CSE) completed five years ago. In the earlier study, costs of saving kWh through utility energy efficiency programs ranged from $0.023 to $0.044 per kWh. The expanded 2009 report found that CSEs have declined to a range of $0.016 to $0.033 per kWh, with an average of $0.025.
“Energy efficiency is a cost-effective solution to many problems, including the growing economic and environmental costs of carbon dioxide emissions,” noted ACEEE utilities program director Dan York, another of the reports coauthors.
The more recent data suggest that the costs of energy efficiency remained stable in various geographic regions and across time. The report may have an impact on U.S. Senate deliberations on climate change legislation, the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and state-level decisions on new power generation.