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lot on traditional DSM approaches like our residentialPower Smart. There like elsewhere, the impact isoften dubious.“There’s no magic bullet, and there’s no sure-fireway of getting a lot of people on a regular basis toconserve a lot of energy,” says Alan H. Sanstad, staffscientist and energy policy analyst at the LawrenceBerkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.“Even when DSM is effective, the results on thewhole are modest.”What is clear, he says, is what does not work.“There’s this idea that providing information gets peopleto conserve energy, and that idea is false, and wasdemonstrated to be false decades ago. When demandside management works, it works because there aremoney flows.”BC Hydro strikes backBC Hydro’s Patrick Mathot, manager of residentialmarketing for Power Smart agrees with one majorpoint made by Jaccard: BC Hydro does a lot of scrutinyof the effectiveness of their conservation spending,including accounting for free ridership.“We ensure that there are many more people who areinfluenced by our incentive activities and all the otherwork it takes to get that product in front of them. Thesheer volume of those people overwhelm the free ridersto ensure the program still makes business sense.”(Jaccard stressed that his research shows BC Hydroto be one of the best utilities in North America whenit comes to being “self-critical” and taking pains toaccurately evaluate the effectiveness of their DSMprograms.)tree.”The incentives will only growTo date, more than 4,000 BC households have reducedtheir energy consumption enough to collecttheir Team Power Smart $75 cheque, leaving about55,000 other Team Power Smart households out there-- including mine -- to take action.Mathot says BC Hydro’s installation of 1.8 milliondigital smart meters in B.C. homes and businessesstarting this summer (projected to cost over $900 million)will make it possible for customers to see whenand how much electricity is used in the home. “Butultimately,” he says, “it will be up to people to makethe decision to use less and take action to reduce theirconsumption.”Which brings this all back to me. Team Power Smart’sonline tools -- developed by social marketing expertsto spur my conservation, show that my small townhouseconsumed nearly 13,000 kWh in 2010 -- almostdouble what the average Californian residential utilitycustomer consumed.And therein lies a glimmer of hope for residentialelectricity conservation across British Columbia.When the day comes that I have to pay the same ratesas a Californian, I’ll have much more incentive to act.Like in California, the light bulb has been the primaryfocus of BC Hydro’s residential programs sincePower Smart began in 1989. He says their programsfocused on lighting have had the best return on investmentfor BC Hydro -- they’ve spent about $30 millionover the last 10 years, resulting in a savings of 600gWh in the residential sector alone. But he concedesthe job will get harder moving forward.“It’s getting to be more of a challenge to find moreenergy savings to have, because we are running outof the low-hanging fruit and are now moving up the62