• Research Report
  • Energy Efficiency Policy

    • Aug 19, 2016

    The Greatest Energy Story You Haven’t Heard: How Investing in Energy Efficiency Changed the US Power Sector and Gave Us a Tool to Tackle Climate Change

    For decades, energy efficiency has been a critical strategy for meeting US electricity needs while saving consumers billions of dollars in avoided infrastructure costs. Just how big is energy effic…

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    For decades, energy efficiency has been a critical strategy for meeting US electricity needs while saving consumers billions of dollars in avoided infrastructure costs. Just how big is energy efficiency today across the US electric power sector? This paper quantifies the energy savings and other benefits from a set of energy efficiency programs and policies. We examine the combined savings from appliance and equipment efficiency standards, utility-sector energy efficiency programs, and building energy codes. We find that since 1990, energy efficiency has become the third-largest electricity resource in the United States; without it, we would need the equivalent of 313 additional large power plants to meet the country’s energy needs. If savings from appliance standards, utility programs, and building codes reached their full potential, efficiency would become our nation’s largest electricity resource by 2030, providing a wealth of benefits.

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    Note: This report was updated on July 31, 2026, to reflect data from Commonwealth Edison received after publication that showed additional spending on low-income efficiency programs. Resultant updates to the analysis yielded an increase in the overall average spending (of all utilities in the sample) on low-income programs in 2024. This increased the average share of budgets dedicated to programming for low-income populations to 14.1% and reduced the average “equity gap” to 13.8%; each change was less than 1 percentage point. ComEd-specific results were updated throughout. Additionally, the per-household savings data for Baltimore Gas and Electric was corrected, and that resulted in BGE no longer being listed in the top quartile of utilities in that category.

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    The United States faces interlocking energy challenges: rising home energy bills and gasoline prices; new demand for electricity from data centers and other loads; high greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. 

    Now, a new era of energy efficiency progress in our buildings, transportation, and industry is needed to meet this moment. This wide-ranging study finds a massive opportunity.

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