We urge the adoption the adoption of a nationwide program to accelerate utility investment in energy-saving technologies, products, and practices and thereby slow the growth in consumption of electricity and natural gas in all 50 states.

The Energy Efficiency Resource Standard is such a program, providing each major electricity and natural gas distributor with a simple and equitable target for achieving energy savings over a multi-year period. Treating cost-effective energy efficiency as an energy resource for large-scale acquisition will help restrain consumer energy costs, improve service reliability, reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants and create more jobs than traditional energy resource development.

In principle, we support an Energy Efficiency Resource Standard that would:

1. Achieve significant savings of both electricity and natural gas and significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions;
2. Set energy-saving targets that are to be achieved by utilities by 2020;
3. Help energy consumers achieve significant savings of energy at their end point of use;
4. Encourage combined heat and power (CHP) and recycled energy as eligible energy-saving choices;
5. Allow energy efficiency improvements within utility distribution systems to be credited toward compliance with the standard;
6. Ensure credits and workable measurement and verification of energy savings;
7. Encourage transparency in energy efficiency procurement;
8. Provide for bilateral contracts to permit covered utilities to procure some efficiency savings from other utilities or third-party efficiency providers.

We recommend the establishment of a stand-alone Energy Efficiency Resource Standard that will achieve, by the end of 2020, annual electricity savings of 15 percent and annual natural gas savings of 10 percent, including savings from new building codes and equipment efficiency standards.