Saving Lives Through Saving Energy

Energy efficiency is the low-hanging fruit of a sustainable energy future, but it's not being harvested to anything like the extent it needs to be across our nation. Utilities are a key to changing this picture. No other industry is better placed to put its strengths to work to help customers save energy and money while reducing pressures on the environment -- and providing value to shareholders, too.

While there's no limit to the ways energy efficiency can be applied, our experience at Public Service Electric & Gas is that a targeted approach works best. We identified hospitals as a high energy-usage sector that faced significant barriers in moving ahead with energy efficiency improvements, yet where doing so would help everyone we serve.

PSE&G's $129 million hospital energy efficiency program is one of only four of its type in the nation and the only one that doesn't require hospitals to bear the upfront costs. Cash-strapped hospitals receive investment-grade audits to pinpoint improvements that will significantly reduce energy usage. PSE&G then makes the investment to help defray the costs of these capital-intensive projects. This initiative has proved so successful that our regulators gave us the green light to expand it to enable more hospitals to participate.

This effort is creating many wins. The typical hospital benefits from energy improvements and savings that it wouldn't have achieved on its own. Our residential customers benefit from improvements that free up resources to support quality health care in their communities. The local economy benefits from additional investment, creating good jobs along with business opportunities. And, our entire customer base benefits from steps that conserve energy and promote a healthy environment.

Efforts like this show the extent to which energy efficiency pays off. The 19 hospitals participating in our energy efficiency program to date are expected to save $8 million a year in energy costs - savings that are anticipated to grow to $160 million over 20 years.

Overall, PSE&G is investing more than $300 million in a range of energy efficiency programs that have produced savings for customers and are expected to create about 1,300 jobs. We tailor our initiatives to expand access to energy efficiency to the fullest extent possible - with a special focus on the needs of our urban communities.

There's plenty of room for more efforts like these throughout our nation. Public policies that treat investments in energy efficiency like investments in pipes and wires would go a long way toward helping make this happen. Utility energy efficiency efforts can produce a rich harvest of benefits such as improved reliability, reduced environmental impacts, new jobs, increased economic activity - and high-quality health care, too. That's a powerful combination of wins for everyone.

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