Six different climate studies all point to the same conclusion: Energy efficiency is the cheapest way for the U.S. to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
And some models show consumer costs actually falling as the nation ramps up energy efficiency to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan.
Those are the findings in a new report by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a non-profit policy organization. C2ES examined six studies that attempt to model the economics of the proposed federal rule.
The C2ES report comes as tension heightens about the cost of the Clean Power Plan, which the EPA intends to issue in final form this summer. The plan targets existing power plants and calls for states to come up with strategies to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions 30 percent by 2030.
“All studies project that energy efficiency will be the most used and least-cost option to implement the plan,” said C2ES in the report. “The studies also show that the effect of energy efficiency is large enough that overall electricity consumption declines.”
C2ES examined models put forward by the EPA, the Clean Air Task Force, Energy Ventures Analysis, National Economic Research Associates (NERA), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Rhodium/Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Prices down, not up
Most striking, under some scenarios consumers will actually see power costs decline — not increase as Clean Power Plan critics claim — when energy efficiency is used to reduce emissions.
The NRDC study showed the greatest savings — $4.5 billion per year — brought about by a drop in electricity use because of increased energy efficiency.
Meanwhile, the NERA study found the greatest rise in costs — $33.5 billion a year, which represents 9.2 percent of the nation’s total $364 billion spend on power. NERA looked at influences across the economy, and assumed the plan would create “capital scarcity.” It also assumed relatively high costs to install energy efficiency.
The results also varied between the models because the authors used different assumptions about how much natural gas the U.S. will use in the future and what its costs will be. NRDC, for example, factored in relatively low natural gas prices because it expects energy efficiency to curb demand for the fossil fuel.
Overall, most of the studies estimate that the Clean Power Plan will cost the average U.S. household less than 25 cents a day, C2ES said.
Less power generation
In a business-as-usual case, without the Clean Power Plan, the U.S. is likely to increase energy production by 748 TWh through 2030. It’s likely that natural gas and coal would account for most of the generation, the report said.
The picture changes dramatically when the carbon reduction strategy is super-imposed. It shows less power generation in general, and less coal-fired generation in particular. Meanwhile, use of natural gas generation still rises. But add energy efficiency, and the need for generation drops substantially, in one case wiping out the entire 748 TWh increase.
Given the cost of building new power plants, a scenario with no energy efficiency — and therefore more generation — means higher prices. Further, the nation becomes more dependent on natural gas. More demand for more natural gas means higher prices for the fuel, which then boosts electricity rates.
In fact, absent energy efficiency, the Clean Power Plan raises energy costs by $9.2 billion per year under the NRDC model and $57.1 billion per year under the NERA model. Some of the variation is due to different expectations about the cost of installing energy efficiency measures.
Meanwhile, C2ES finds growth in renewables and nuclear h0lding steady with or without the carbon reduction strategy.
The report did not suggest that any one model is better than the others, but said that states preparing their carbon reduction strategies could benefit from several high-level insights found in all six studies.
Here is a link to the full C2ES report “Modeling EPA’s Clean Power Plan: Insights for Cost-Effective Implementation.”
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