Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

314National Energy Securitycounties across the country are going to undertake the kind of study that the peoplein Franklin county have pioneered….They can act in their own communitiesto take charge of their own future.That’s a spirit worth bottling and spreading around. 51Occasionally an analysis whose motivation originates outside a communitycan still have a valuable influence within it. For example, the study Jobs andEnergy, 52 organized by Jim Benson and others under the auspices of the Councilon Economic Priorities, made important methodological advances in calculatingthe economic and employment benefits of meeting energy needs by greaterefficiency (and a few solar measures) rather than by building two proposednuclear plants on Long Island. This comparison had long been the subject ofspeculation, but had not previously been carefully analyzed. It turned out thatredirecting the four-billion-dollar nuclear investment toward more cost-effective(and resilient) options would save Long Island energy users between sevenand eleven billion dollars and would create ten to twelve thousand more newjobs in the two-county area than would the nuclear project.Sometimes an energy emergency provides the spur for mobilizing communitysentiment. 53 For example, when the Arab oil embargo curtailed nearly all theexpected 1974 oil deliveries to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power,the Department issued stern warnings and proposed phased restrictions on electricityuse, including eventual rolling blackouts. 54 Concerned about likely layoffs,Mayor Bradley appointed a blue-ribbon panel—three representatives from businessand industry, three from labor, and three from city government—who, afterworking almost continuously for six days, emerged with a plan which the Mayorendorsed to the City Council. It was adopted with little change and receivedextensive press coverage. It called for two phases of reduction in energy use ineach sector, with stiff penalties for customers failing to meet targets for their sectors,but few specific uses were proscribed. Community response was overwhelming.In Phase One, the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors, targetedto save ten, twenty, and ten percent respectively, actually saved eighteen,twenty-eight, and ten. The city’s total use of energy fell seventeen percent in thefirst two months, compared with the twelve hoped for. An eleven-percent dropoccurred just in the first four days. The proposed penalties were never needed andwere eventually suspended. Indeed, electricity use did not rebound to its 1973level until 1976, suggesting that customers had not found the savings (from “goodhousekeeping measures,” not even efficiency gains) particularly burdensome.Buoyed by that success, a citizen’s commission appointed by the Mayor,and supported by one of the federal grants given to seventeen cities for comprehensiveenergy management planning, devised during 1979–81 an attrac-