I'm from California and I can tell you that a lot more can be done here to achieve even greater efficiencies, as Romm suggests. However, even if the rest of the country follows California's lead we're still going to have to build some more plants because we should be taking every fossil-fueled plant offline, and most of the current nuclear plants are going to be reaching the end of their service lives soon. That doesn't leave us with much generating power. So while we should all dive deeply into energy efficiency, we must nevertheless consider just what sort of new generating systems we're going to build, because build them we must.

You're saying we should be efficient and responsible in our energy use?

Wouldn't that mean letting the terrorists win?

I'm sure George W. said that would mean letting the terrorists win....

how long are you going to let pollies run your country?

into the ground...

...gobble the Earth. Everything else is heresy.

After my still-fairly recent five-year stint in SoCal I am still marvelling at how incredibly far ahead of the rest of the country The Republic of California has come in a mere 30 years. I was astounded not only at the accomplishment of what had been declared by many to be "impossible" (wishful thinking by a lot of people, many of whom are now dead), but at the improvements to the quality of life which were by-products of enforced efficiency. Everything worked better. Building construction was vastly superior, post 1978, to anything I've seen in the rest of the country, and especially residential. Furthermore, this effect continues to trickle down everywhere, all the time.

When the rolling blackouts took place during some high-heat and high energy demand periods in the early part of this century the media ate it up, but damn near nothing of any consequence happened because of them. As a way of rolling with a punch in an evolving system of efficiency, the blackouts (and brownouts) were, for one thing, almost exlusively during daylight hours, so virtually no one suffered from an actual "blackout." I honestly didn't notice at all (but then, I also failed to notice two or three earthquakes as well).

Between the sense of acceptance that comes with feeling defeated only to realize the fight was misdirected anyway and just used up more energy, and the determination to make work what absololutely could not be abandoned, Californians proved that any difficulty can be surmounted and even killed and eaten (like the wolf at the door).

Californians can complain as well as anyone in this country ("Oh my god, it's raining!"), but when the chips were down they just did the math and did the work. There's plenty more to be done out there, but when I look around the Baltimore-Washington-Richmond corridor I am filled simultaneously with dread and excitement at what must happen and what enormous good will come of it once the people here realize all they have to do is, in terms of energy generation, eat their own garbage. In that sense we will be rolling in dough some day soon.

The east coast tends to dis and dismiss California and all things granola-like, but this is one "war" they can safely be projected to have won already, because once the lever has been lifted past the level of the fulcrum it becomes ever more easy to tip over that apple cart.

Joseph Romm needs an audience, and sooner or later he will have it. Of course we,the people who consume this energy and pay its exhorbitant price could start the revolution right now and save ourselves and our children a whole lot of aggravation. It's an issue which can be forced and ought to be -- now. Why wait for the Obama energy plan to get formulated and enacted when we can begin applying pressure to the wound right now?

I hope your message appears in every possible outlet. Please consider offering it to the wire services. Please plug it everywhere.

And Salon, thank you for running this piece. Please give this author his rights so he can send this story everywhere.

I think you make a valid point, but you are missing the largest potential savings in terms of energy efficiency: Encouraging use of base-load, instead of peak-load.

There are two kinds of electric generation for power grids, base-load and peak-load. Base-load is how much power is required to be online 24x7 to meet average demand. Peak-load is the amount of power required for maximum demand times, typically from 4pm to 10pm local time. The peak-load is the extra electric load required when people come home, turn on the TV, do laundry, leave a dozen lights on, and generally consume electricity like the energy hogs they are.. At least in America.

The difference between the two is that base-load is done by honkin' big power plants, which give you a finite number of emissions sources to monitor and clean up. Peak-load, however, is done by inefficient and polluting gas-turbines. Those turbines, because they are so small (relatively speaking) and operate so few hours during the year, are exempt from emissions monitoring. They're also far more expensive to operate.

Therefore, one of the best ways to encourage energy efficiency is to change the behavior of consumption. By reducing peak-load, we use less of the least-efficient power plants. This is actually easily done...

1) Electric companies need to start charging customers based on the actual cost of the electricity at the time that the customer uses it. This involves basically replacing every electric meter in the US. Given the potential savings, I would have no problems supporting federal subsidies for this.

2) Federal mandates that washers/driers/dishwashers sold in the US must be equipped with delay-start timers. My guesstimate would be an additional cost of $0.25/machine to do this.

With those two items, you will see people realize how much electricity they use at peak-load. Once they come to the conclusion that it is in the own self-interest to reschedule laundry to start at 2 am, or make sure that extra light is turned off, or even change the thermostat by a couple of degrees.

Short form: If you show people that they tend to come home and leave the car running to power their homes, they'll cut down on the electricity.

-ng