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

Efficiency can and should be our first step toward a sustainable energy future. However, I think Mr. Romm is a bit unfair toward utilities, many of which have pioneered efficiency programs for decades and some of which are already on board with decoupling revenues from consumption.

In fact (and especially in places like CA where reserve margins are paper thin), utilities have an interest in promoting efficiency in order to "keep the lights on" during peak demand.

Mr. Romm's main thesis is spot-on. I just wish he would have stayed clear of the unfortunately common device of vilifying a straw man in order to make his point. There are some utilities that will dig in their heels, but there are others who are already pushing for reform. Since they'll all figure in the eventual solution, I think it's important to make that distinction.

Look at wind power like T. Boone Pickens is proposing, look at the Electric car that they are building in Israel and India, expand the use of solar power, turn loose the inginuity of the American engineering talent that put a man on the moon in 9 years. Stop putting oil men in the Oval office and the Vice Presidency, and take the "For Sale" sign off the United States Congress, that would be a good start.

Question: if Exxon is genuinely so 'rosy' in its outlook for finding more oil, how come my stock is in a nosedive?

I found Romm to have articulated something with honesty. It's true, and he's merely another messenger. Time we all listened. And pulled the cotton out of our policy-makers' ears.

Overall, it's becoming clear to me that the following are the primary ingredients to pulling us away from the climate change + oil shock nightmares that are otherwise to come:

1. Efficiency -- from this article and elsewhere, it's clear that the single largest gains are available here. One big factor that the article didn't mention explicitly is co-generation: if you're using an energy source that generates heat as a by-product, channel that heat into something useful. This works especially well in factories.

2. Electrification -- cars, semi trucks, heat pumps instead of gas-powered heaters, maybe freight trains, etc. Bring as much as possible to this common, already-widespread energy currency. Generally this will mean an (often huge) efficiency boost as well.

By the way, hydrogen will not cut it as such a universal currency -- it's too inefficient (requiring 4x the generation capacity), too hard to store and/or transport, and too far off in the future.

Hydrogen could be useful, though, for those applications that are mobile and need far more energy density than electric batteries can provide soon (e.g. jet aircraft, maybe ocean freighters). Though biofuels might often be the better alternative here.

3. Solar + Wind + Smart Grid -- basically, new, non-carbon sources of electricity, and -- very importantly -- nationwide/international electric grids that are smart enough to handle dynamic, distributed generation as well as loads.

This will eventually displace all the carbon-releasing generation: Solar matches the peak-demand curve pretty well, and Wind does well at night. If you have a grid covering a wide-enough geographic area, intermittency issues between the two nearly disappear. For the remaining 5-10% of the time, the key feature will be the "smart grid" being truly smart, and tapping into the battery capacity of autos and trucks. By the time Solar and Wind are built out enough for their intermittency to start to be an issue, the battery capacity in autos and trucks will be enormous (that is, assuming oil prices can stay high enough).

Imagine you knew you only needed 1/3 of your car's battery capacity for the day's driving; for the other 2/3, you could instruct your car to buy energy from the grid if the price falls below X, and sell it back to the grid if the price rises above Y. During the day, Solar generation might have an excess of capacity, and prices could drop below X, so your car (assuming you have it plugged in at work) would buy. At night, if the wind isn't blowing enough in enough places, and base generation (hydro,wave,...?) isn't enough to meet demand, the price could rise above Y, and your car would sell, until it draws the battery down to the minimum capacity you've set.

That's the way a "free market" for electricity could actually be workable -- because the players (computers in cars, trucks, wind sites, etc, with the grid acting as the communication medium) would be monitoring and "negotiating" prices in real-time. Of course there'd also need to be regulations to forbid the shutting down of generation capacity to manipulate prices (though with many small solar/wind installations, there should be enough players to minimize that anyways).