The State Energy Efficiency Scorecard for 2006

Maggie Eldridge, Bill Prindle, Dan York, and Steve Nadel

June 2007

More and more states are turning to energy efficiency as the “first fuel” in the race for clean and secure energy resources.  In their commitments to advance energy efficiency policies and programs, they are outpacing the federal government by a widening margin. States now spend about three times as much on energy efficiency programs as the federal government, and are leading the way on appliance standards, building codes, energy efficiency resource standards, and other key policies that drive energy efficiency investment. In this era of state pre-eminence, it is important to document best practices and recognize leadership among the states, so that other states follow, and to encourage federal action to catch up. Toward that end, ACEEE developed this report as a comprehensive ranking of state energy efficiency policies and identified exemplary programs and policies within each policy category. The report ranks states based on their progress in eight energy efficiency policy categories:

Summary of Rankings

Table ES-1 contains a summary ranking of the states on the eight policy categories included in this study. The “top ten” states, based on their combined scores, are:

1. Vermont, Connecticut, and California (tie)
4. Massachusetts
5. Oregon
6. Washington
7. New York
8. New Jersey
9. Rhode Island, Minnesota (tie)

The top ten states earn scores between 20 and 33 out of a possible 44 points, and the next fifteen states’ scores trail fairly moderately behind:  all score more than 10 points, up to 17.5 points.  The bottom 26 states, however, seriously lag behind the other states, scoring between 0.5 and 10 points.

View full report as a PDF or click to order hard copy.

72 pp., 2007, $35.00, E075