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Enron Mail |
John: Please keep this confidential, but as you can see, this is not at all
what I'm looking for. I need what we discussed yesterday. Thanks, Jeff Lynnette Barnes 03/23/2001 12:19 PM To: John Neslage/ENRON_DEVELOPMENT@ENRON_DEVELOPMENT, Jeff Dasovich/NA/Enron@Enron cc: Subject: Ca demand vs Texas Ventura County Star February 27, 2001 Tuesday Copyright 2001 Ventura County Star ? Ventura County Star February 27, 2001 Tuesday SECTION: News; Pg. A01 LENGTH: 579 words HEADLINE: State not a major power glutton CHARGES FALL FLAT: Statistics show California to be cautious user of energy supplies BYLINE: Andrew Bridges; The Associated Press BODY: LOS ANGELES -- California's continuing power crisis has led neighboring states to accuse the Golden State of hogging electricity, saying its appetite for energy threatens to plunge the entire West into darkness. But the numbers paint a different picture, one of a California that does use a vast amount of electricity but consumes less on a per-capita basis than all other states except Rhode Island. Mild weather and having proportionately fewer energy-gobbling industries than some other states are part of the reason. However, experts say credit also must go to stringent conservation guidelines. "It's true we're big, and it's true we didn't build a lot of power plants because of restructuring. But we're not energy hogs at all," said Arthur Rosenfeld, who sits on the five-member California Energy Commission. "We're almost as good as Western Europe, and Western Europe is about twice as energy efficient as the United States." Among the 50 states, only Texas consumes more energy -- its total use of electricity, natural gas and oil -- than California. However, California ranks 47th in per-capita energy use -- well below No. 4 Texas, No. 20 Washington and No. 27 Oregon, according to statistics from the Energy Information Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Energy. When looking specifically at per-capita electricity consumption, California ranks 49th. The state's residents use 60 percent as much electricity as the average American. For air conditioning alone, a typical California household uses one-third the amount of electricity as a household in Texas or Florida, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's 1997 Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Experts say both weather and conservation measures play large roles in that figure. "It's a different climate, so even if you do have warm summers, they're not humid (in California), so you don't have the big, huge air conditioning load you see in Florida or Texas," said Robert Latta, the survey's manager at the Energy Information Administration. California also uses electricity, as well as natural gas, oil and coal, more wisely than most states thanks to aggressive conservation efforts started during the oil shocks of the early 1970s, federal and state data show. Key to those efforts are stringent standards for new homes and commercial buildings that dictate such guidelines as the types of windows and lighting that can be used to the amount of insulation. Roughly 60 percent of the electricity used in California goes to heat, cool and light those structures. "If (California) is not the leading state, they are at least tied for it" in efficiency standards, said Ed Wisniewski, deputy director of the Boston-based Consortium for Energy Efficiency. "Historically, they have been very progressive, and many of the programs we advocate nationally were started in California." The California Energy Commission, which shapes state energy policy and planning, estimates California's average demand for electricity at any given time at about 50,000 megawatts. That figure would be much greater if not for conservation efforts, Rosenfeld said. "If we used as much electricity as Texas, we'd be a 100,000-megawatt state," he said. Texas has more heavy industry, less stringent conservation mandates and a harsher climate. On the residential side, Texans use 50 percent more energy per household than Californians, much of that for heating and cooling. LOAD-DATE: February 27, 2001
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