Consumer Impacts of A Clean Energy: Energy Efficiency

Clean energy offers many benefits to consumers, including reducing consumers’ electricity bills, lowering total electricity system costs, and providing health and resilience benefits. States can accelerate consumers' access to these benefits with policies that support energy efficiency, demand flexibility, renewable energy and storage. Berkeley Lab developed a series of briefs that explore the consumer benefits of clean energy, and identify actions states can take to promote them. This brief focuses on energy efficiency benefits, and builds on prior analysis from Berkeley Lab’s Cost of Saved Energy database. We show that energy efficiency remains a low-cost energy and capacity resource; the levelized cost of saving energy for the programs included in the analysis is $0.02/kilowatt-hour and the cost of saving peak demand is less $120/kilowatt. Understanding the impact of the program mix, portfolio size, and duration of implementation for customer-funded energy efficiency portfolios can guide regulatory oversight of these programs, help utilities better utilize energy efficiency as a resource, and inform building energy decarbonization policies.