Tag Archives: efficiency

Utility Execs’ New Worry:
 Economic Growth,
 Electricity Sales
 No Longer Linked

If you just glance at the chart below you will dismiss it out of hand—boring, you’ll yell, why are you wasting my time with that graphic, you’ll ask. But take a second, closer look and you’ll see that this graphic tells a compelling story, that of the collapse of the electric utility business model.

Retail sales of electricity in the United States have flat-lined for the past decade: In 2006 total retail sales were 3,669,919 million kilowatt-hours (kwh), in 2015 they were 3,724,525 million kwh. Do the math, that’s an increase of just 54,606 million kwh—or less than 1.5 percent total in 10 years.

Retail_sales_of_electricity,_annual

Continue reading Utility Execs’ New Worry:
 Economic Growth,
 Electricity Sales
 No Longer Linked

EIA Energy Outlook
 Underscores Efficacy
 Of Efficiency Efforts

The Energy Information Administration’s annual energy outlook, which was released last week, is like manna from heaven for geeky industry analysts and commentators, most definitely including myself.

Like any projection—as I have discussed in prior posts (see this piece in particular)—it is probably outdated essentially from the minute it is finished. But to EIA’s credit, it doesn’t oversell the analysis, noting instead that its forecasts “are not statements of what will happen, but of what might happen, given the assumptions and methodologies used for any particular case.” In addition, and here EIA gets extra credit, the agency takes a policy-neutral approach in its analysis, using current law in its projections; there are no assumptions about new legislation, executive orders or extensions of policies with sunset dates. As such, EIA’s analysis is about as fair as it can get.

Despite these limitations, there are a number of fascinating items in EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2015 (which can be found here).

Continue reading EIA Energy Outlook
 Underscores Efficacy
 Of Efficiency Efforts