Since the Northeast Energy Efficiency Standards Project began in 2002, Project partners have been advocating for legislation to adopt appliance standards. Prior to 2005 Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey in the Northeast and Washington, Arizona and Oregon, nationally, enacted appliance standards legislation. These state actions spurred the U.S. Congress to include efficiency standards in the federal energy bill of 2005.
As a result of the federal adoption of efficiency standards, energy consumption in the Northeast will drop by 11,000 gigawatt-hours annually, which is the equivalent to the electricity use of 1.5 million households. Peak electricity demand will by reduced by 3,000 megawatts and natural gas consumption will go down by almost 20,000 billion BTUs (quarter million households). These savings will translate into economic benefits of over 11 billion dollars.
Despite the recent federal energy efficiency standards, significant opportunities for energy savings remain through the state adoption of additional standards. Consequently, the Project developed a second set of efficiency standards, which were incorporated into a new model bill. Adoption of this second set of standards will generate an additional annual savings of 6,700 gigawatt-hours, 1,500 megawatts, 14,000 billion BTUs of heating fuels such as heating oil and natural gas and reduce carbon emissions by 1,350 thousand metric tons. These energy savings will result in 13 billion dollars in economic benefits due to lower energy expenditures by both consumers and businesses.
Since November 2005, three states (Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont) have adopted legislation setting energy efficiency standards on a number of appliances. These states joined New York (legislation enacted in July 2005) in passing the second wave of efficiency standards legislation. Standards adopted in these four states have captured almost 40 percent of the potential savings noted above.
The charts below detail the savings already generated by the adoption of the second set of energy efficiency standards legislation as well as the potential benefits associated with the remaining Northeast states following suit.
*updated files will be available shortly.
For more information regarding the project, contact Project Manager Isaac Elnecave
at 781-860-9177, ext. 23 or by e-mail at ielnecave@neep.org.
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