January 11, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) will present recommendations on the critical role that energy efficiency should play in natural gas policy at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee natural gas policy conference to be held on January 24. ACEEE's recommendations will expand upon comments provided to Chairman Domenici (R-NM) last Friday. This filing can be found at: http://aceee.org/energy/natlgas.htm.

ACEEE research results have shown that energy efficiency is the most viable near-term strategy for moderating natural gas prices, and also is vital for stabilizing longer-term gas markets. Our proposal is based on a recent ACEEE analysis, which illustrated that if we reduce gas demand by as little as 4% over the next five years, we would reduce wholesale natural gas prices by more than 20%. These savings would put over $100 billion back into the U.S. economy at a cost of $30 billion in new investment, of which less than one-quarter would be federal and state public funds.

Moreover, this investment would help bring back U.S. manufacturing jobs that have been lost to high gas prices, and would help relieve the crushing burden of natural gas costs experienced by many lower-income households. Importantly, much of the gas savings in our analysis comes from electricity efficiency measures, because so much electricity is generated by natural gas, often inefficiently.

Along with this filing, other key natural gas research results and references are available on the Web at http://aceee.org/energy/natlgas.htm.