By Kate Ellis, senior policy associate, Fresh Energy

According to a new report released today by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), energy efficiency provisions in the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES – H.R. 2454) with improvements could create more than 569,000 new jobs nationwide in the next 10 years and provide hundreds of dollars in annual savings for every household in America.

For Minnesota, this means 11,400 new jobs created, consumer savings of $240 per household, and electricity savings equivalent to five 300 megawatt power plants!

Check out the Minnesota report here and the full national report here.

Improvements to ACES considered in ACEEE’s analysis are the following:

• Strengthening the Energy Efficiency Resource Standard (EERS) that sets a 10 percent energy savings goal for electric utility companies. (ACES includes a 5 percent EERS with an optional 3 percent increase.)
• Requiring one-third of the electric utility allowances to be used for energy efficiency improvements as are the natural gas allowances in ACES.
• Extending the allocation of 9.5 percent of carbon allowance revenue to the State Energy and Environmental Development (SEED) fund to 2030. (ACES ramps down SEED fund spending beginning in 2016.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 3:28 pm by Fresh Energy and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.