California energy regulators approved spending $3.1 billion over the next three years to cut the amount of electricity used in the state. This is one of the most aggressive energy efficiency plan among U.S. states, with the money being used to retrofit homes and other programs that will cut power needs equivalent to three medium-sized power plants.

The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday unanimously approved plans by Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Gas to provide $3.1 billion in consumer rebates and other efficiency programs over the next three years.

The budget is 42 percent higher than the previous three-year plan. California pioneered the concept of letting utilities raise rates as they spurred conservation, which still is not the case in many U.S. states.

The energy saved through the programs would be the same amount of power produced by three 500 megawatt power plants, according to the CPUC.

The program will also avoid 3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and create between 15,000 and 18,000 jobs.

The move by regulators follows Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s order earlier this month that the state get a third of its electricity from renewable resources by 2020.

The most populous state is also the biggest U.S. alternative energy market, and its environmental standards, including car pollution rules and green building regulations, are models for national and international policies.

To reach California’s goals, however, broader programs that have “holistic approaches” to energy efficiency are key, said Michael Peevey, the commission’s president, in a statement.

“Capturing the full energy efficiency potential in the state requires more than simply providing rebates to support the installation of the latest and greatest widget,” Peevey said.

The funds will kick off the largest residential retrofit effort in the United States. Called CalSPREE, the program aims to cut energy use by 20 percent for up to 130,000 homes in the state by 2012.

The budget also includes $175 million for innovative programs to make zero net energy homes and commercial buildings; $260 million for local efforts to retrofit public sector buildings and save energy; and more than $100 million for education and training programs.

It also phases down subsidies for basic compact fluorescent lamps, shifting to solid state lighting and other efficient light technologies.

“This investment in California’s clean energy economy is just what we need to create new jobs for our communities and fight global warming pollution,” said Lara Ettenson, director of California Energy Efficiency Policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a prominent environmental organization.

Not everyone shares NRDC’s optimism, however.

The Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA), an independent consumer advocacy division of the CPUC, warned that the powerful utility companies should be closely monitored to see how they make use of such a tremendous sum.

In a statement released this morning, the DRA highlighted “a continuing need for stronger mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability in the utilities’ use of the billions of dollars of ratepayer money.” Utility giant PG&E has been criticized in the past for misuse of energy-efficiency funds.
Grassroots organizations advocating for publicly owned electricity systems charge that PG&E has funneled energy efficiency money into campaigns that directly attack public power programs, or to sway public opinion against these alternatives, for its own economic advantage.

DRA has also pointed out that the utility has failed to meet its energy-efficiency targets in the past. At the end of the last energy efficiency program cycle, the company was granted about $41 million in incentive money for successful program implementation, even though an independent analysis revealed that it fell short of its energy-reduction goals.

Despite a 70 percent budget increase relative to the last energy-efficiency program cycle, DRA points out that the utilities have projected comparatively lower energy savings from now until 2012. The division also notes that hard evidence is lacking that the utilities’ energy-efficiency programs are viable and cost-effective. As a result, “ratepayers are investing billions of dollars on faith alone that actual energy savings will result from the programs,” DRA warned in a press statement.

It should also be noted that NRDC is a corporate influenced group, that should not be rightly called an environmental group. It was started by Wall Street attorneys to create a faux buffer between real environmental organizers and corporations in order to dumb down the efforts of good groups working to truly hold corporations accountable to environmental and consumer protections.

Here is a paragraph from PR Watch about NRDC which is part of a longer story on the group at http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2003Q3/enviros.html:

“NRDC had been founded in 1970 by two Wall Street lawyers to fight legal cases to protect the environment. It was funded by the Ford Foundation on the condition that it accepted a conservative board of trustees that included Laurence Rockefeller and other wealthy conservatives. Additionally, Ford stipulated that its legal activities had to be cleared by a group of past presidents of the American Bar Association. One of the two founding lawyers, Stephen Duggan, was a partner in the New York law firm, Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett, which included utilities as a major part of its clientele. At the behest of the Ford Foundation, the NRDC also incorporated a similar public interest law group made up of Yale Law School graduates, which included John Bryson, who later became head of the Californian Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and then chief executive of Southern California Edison Company (SoCalEd). Cavanagh was reportedly a “disciple of Bryson.” “

The only way to make effective inroads on climate change and to insure continued energy supply is to dramatically reduce energy consumption and transition to power-generating sources that do not burn fossil fuels. The problem is that ss it stands, the ones in charge of the state’s new $3 billion energy-saving measures are the same corporate entities that sell electricity and operate fossil fuel powered facilities. The obvious phrase that comes to mind in all this is “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, which literally translates to “Who will guard the guards themselves?”.

Image of AES Huntington Beach Generating Station by r_neches on flickr licensed under Creative Commons