Energy Conservation: It's Time

Salon offers Why we never need to build another polluting power plant which helps dispel some of the energy conservation myths.
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After watching the wealthy NIMBYS fight Cape Wind and listening to the Beacon Hill blame game, it's refreshing to have some facts and information to corroborate that the Dirty Coal plant in Salem and the proposed Dirty Brockton Plant have better alternatives.
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It's time to get beyond the myths and expect more of Beacon Hill and our local officials. Excerpts of the article are below, emphasis mine. Click on the link above and read the entire article about savings accomplished by Dow.

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America is the Saudi Arabia of energy waste. A 2007 report from the international consulting firm McKinsey and Co. found that improving energy efficiency in buildings, appliances and factories could offset almost all of the projected demand for electricity in 2030 and largely negate the need for new coal-fired power plants. McKinsey estimates that one-third of the U.S. greenhouse gas reductions by 2030 could come from electricity efficiency and be achieved at negative marginal costs. In short, the cost of the efficient equipment would quickly pay for itself in energy savings.

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While a few states have energy-efficiency strategies, none matches what California has done. In the past three decades, electricity consumption per capita grew 60 percent in the rest of the nation, while it stayed flat in high-tech, fast-growing California. If all Americans had the same per capita electricity demand as Californians currently do, we would cut electricity consumption 40 percent. If the entire nation had California's much cleaner electric grid, we would cut total U.S. global-warming pollution by more than a quarter without raising American electric bills. And if all of America adopted the same energy-efficiency policies that California is now putting in place, the country would never have to build another polluting power plant.