Today, the Senate Finance Committee released its version of the Health Care Reform package.  Now our national leaders have something to negotiate that should lead to a final bill.

Remember the Cap and Trade Legislation that cleared the House earlier this year?  Right, neither does anyone else.

It seems likely that the time between now and Thanksgiving will be taken up with getting health care done, but then we have to immediately move on to protecting the climate.

Luckily, the Obama lead government is taking steps in the right direction even while the legislative push is focused on health care.  The EPA issued new mileage standards for the auto industry today, and the incentives for energy efficiency in the government stimulus plan are being spent at a faster and faster clip.

Speaking of faster and faster, are we all ready to lobby and show our commitment to climate change legislation when our turn comes?  We better be, or the forces of the status quo (read big coal and big oil) will get the upper hand.  Their powder has been kept dry during the summer, but it is ready to burn at a moments notice.

It is going to take the people, business and government working together to make the changes necessary to achieve endependence, energy independence that ends dependence on polluting fuels.

On your mark, get set, ……….

There is agreement among all of the energy experts that energy efficiency is by far the cheapest way to reduce energy costs.  Much cheaper than a new coal fired or natural gas power plant, a nuclear reactor or a wind or solar farm.

Here is another way to look at efficiency, the amount of GDP generated by the amount of electricity used in a state.

http://ert.rmi.org/cgu/index.html

Source: Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)

The researchers took pains to normalize as much as possible expenditures on heating and cooling based on a given state’s climate.  What emerges is a snapshot of the economic productivity of the energy used by each state ($GDP/kWh = Dollars of Gross Domestic Product per Kilowatt hour of electricity).

The difference between any given state and the top ten states in the study is the productivity gap. RMI estimates that if all states closed their productivity gap, the U.S. would save 1.2 million Gigawatt hours per year.  That is a lot of energy, and a tremendous amount of money to be saved.

Maybe this is tangential, but I found it interesting that three of the four states whose Republican governors are considering “refusing” stimulus funds from the federal government (at least as of February 20, 2009) are ranked as follows:

Louisiana = Governor Bobby Jindal               Ranks #34

South Carolina = Governor Mark Sanford     Ranks #47

Mississippi = Governor Haley Barbour          Ranks #50

A large part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is for “energy” expenditures ($65 billion in tax incentives and expenditures).  Maybe these governors dislike saving energy as much as they dislike taking money that will help their citizens.

http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/investments

In something that will come as no shock to anyone, the State of Alaska is an outlier.  Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is also thinking about saying “thanks, but no thanks” to the stimulus money.  Alaska ranks #2 on the productivity list.

In summary, no matter how you measure it - electric or gas bill, carbon footprint, $GDP/kWh - energy efficiency makes sense and saves dollars.