Are current IOU savings claims in California real or phantom?
According to IOUs May 1, 2004 report on 2003 programs, 51% of SCE savings and 42% of PG&E’s savings are “committed” – i.e. have not yet been installed or have not yet been inspected or approved. (SCG and SDG&E apparently did not count “commitments” in their reported savings – or did not differentiate them.) Unfortunately, as almost every program implementer or administrator knows, many of these “commitments” fail to materialize; and the longer the delays, the less likely they are to be achieved. It is not clear that the CPUC has rigorously followed up to see what portion of these savings were ever realized.So. Calif. Gas presents a different problem. It only uses gas EE funds, since it only sells gas, however 40% of SCG’s claimed benefits overall (as high as 96% in its Non-Residential New Construction program) come from saving electricity – mostly in LADWP territory. If restricted to claiming gas savings only, most of its programs are not cost-effective.
