Consultancy group Energy Resource Management and think tank Center for American Progress estimate that Americans waste $130 billion in energy each year.
But simple investments in homes, office buildings and factories could cost-effectively eliminate this.
The report states that policy choices are crucial to drawing private sector investment to energy efficiency projects. To illustrate this, the report identifies the top 10 states that have aggressively pursued energy efficiency through strong policies and incentives and consequently attracted business.
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States were ranked according to how they observed 10 key energy efficiency policies such as supporting large upfront costs of projects through a loan paid in for 20 years by charging a certain amount to a house owner's property taxes. This is called the Property Assessed Clean Energy or PACE program.
Few industries have felt the economic downturn harder than the construction industry. More than one in three construction workers lost their jobs, the report shows.
"Putting efficiency to work will require thousands of new engineering and construction jobs right away," said Bill Campbell, chairman of Energy Resource Management.
On top of the billions of dollars that can be earned and saved through energy efficiency, Bracken Hendricks, senior fellow from the Center for American Progress, said that it will produce 650,000 new jobs over a decade.
"Energy efficiency is the true stimulus that America's economy needs: good jobs, higher productivity,
lower carbon emissions and energy security all rolled into one," said Curtis Robinhold, chief executive of the consultancy firm.
[ States ]
According to the study, Connecticut leads all states in energy efficiency, with nine of the 10 policies in place, save for the availability of PACE program.
The state's energy efficiency programs have been in place for 12 years, beginning with the Connecticut energy efficiency fund created in 1998, which is a public-private partnership with the state's utility companies funded through a small charge on customers' bills.
The state also has strict noncompliance penalties on its energy efficiency-related requirements for power suppliers, such as $55 per megawatt-hour fee for utilities that do not meet targets.
California, ranked second, boasts of having a healthy PACE program. The state's energy efficiency plan includes a commercial sector goal to have 50 percent of existing buildings bring their net energy consumption to zero by 2030.
The state also plans to make 25 percent of existing homes achieve a 70 percent decrease in purchased energy from 2008 levels and increase that to 75 percent of homes by 2020. An estimated 18,000 new jobs are expected in just two years as a result of energy efficiency-related initiatives.
Other notable policy decisions are Maryland's bold target to reduce statewide consumption by 15 percent by 2020. Massachusetts has a 10 percent energy efficiency target by 2017 in addition to a three-year plan to bring customers $4 billion in energy savings.
Maryland, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania rounded off top five, while New York, Texas, North Carolina, New Jersey and Ohio make up the rest of the top 10 states.
"These states and policies start to make it very attractive for the largest building owners in the commercial and government sectors to implement financially beneficial energy efficiency upgrades to their real estate portfolios - turning their real estate into energy resources," said Mr. Robinhold.
source: ecosee.org/ APEC-VC Korea
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