Who Left The Light On?

                                    

Last night, I went to a community forum at a local church here in Northern Virginia. One of the event organizers had a very strong opinion that the local utility should do more to encourage energy efficiency as opposed to building a new advanced coal-based power plant that is needed to meet projected energy demand.

But is it really the utility’s responsibility to provide incentives for us the consumer to be more energy efficient?

I left the forum and came back to my hotel room. When I walked in the door to the unoccupied room, three lights and the flat screen television were all on! My guess is that they had been left on since the housekeeping staff did evening turn-down service — or, even worse, since the room was cleaned earlier in the day.

The fact is, the utility didn’t turn on the lights or the television and force the hotel to pay for electricity it wasn’t using. So why do people think that utilities (talking more broadly here) are not doing enough to urge us as consumers to do more to save electricity?

The bottom line is that electricity generators must produce electricity to meet consumer demand. We as consumers establish that demand based upon our behavior.

I think we’re all doing some good work in this area, but it is too easy for some folks to shift the blame clearly where it doesn’t belong. If we want to see more done to increase energy efficiency, let’s not blame the electricity generators who simply produce the electricity the consumers are demanding.

We probably need to do more to increase businesses such as hotels and office buildings that stay lit up at night. (In fact, even before the recent “Earth Hour,” I had suggested efforts to ensure that lights in cities are turned off at night … EVERY NIGHT).