The Energy Foundation works to reduce carbon emissions from the electric and gas utility industry by advancing energy efficiency and renewable energy. The primary focus is on state and regional opportunities.

Power generation by electric utilities in the United States takes a severe toll on the environment. U.S. power plants discharge nearly three-quarters of the country's acid rain emissions (sulfur dioxide), over one-third of its greenhouse-gas emissions (carbon dioxide), one-third of its smog emissions (nitrogen oxide), one-third of its particulate matter, half of its nuclear waste, and one-quarter of its toxic heavy metals.

Renewable energy technologies, such as wind, geothermal, photovoltaic, and biomass have made major advances in the past decade. With forward-looking policies, they could play a larger role in meeting future U.S. energy needs. Renewable energy costs have dropped while reliability and performance have improved dramatically. The cost of wind power, for example, dropped from 25 cents per kilowatt-hour in 1980 to below 5 cents today. Wind is now competitive with natural gas and coal power. Increased production would further reduce costs, creating substantial economic, environmental, and national security benefits. Wind power is already emerging as an important source of rural economic development in many parts of the country. The modular nature of wind power makes it possible for farmers and ranchers to own wind farms, resulting in energy becoming a form of value-added agriculture.

Energy-efficient alternatives in this sector are also particularly compelling. Utility energy efficiency investments around the country prove that energy can be saved for much less than the cost of generating that electricity. Efficiency efforts in California, for example, have cut demand by one-fifth over the last 20 years, avoiding the need for 20 large power plants and saving consumers billions of dollars. Over time, between one-third and one-half of current U.S. electricity consumption could be saved through energy efficiency.

The power sector supports work in the following areas:

• Policies that yield large-scale purchases of renewable energy, expanding the size of the industry;
• Policies that yield substantial investments in the utility sector to improve energy efficiency; and
• Policies that remove market and regulatory barriers to renewables, efficiency, and clean distributed generation.