Energy cost increases during the last two years have put more attention than ever on energy efficiency and demand response programs. Studies increasingly indicate that the United States can meet a significant portion of its energy needs by adopting efficiency and demand response programs. Our own industry research organization, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), has determined that energy efficiency programs can reduce the rate of growth in the use of electricity nationwide by 22 percent per year from 2008 to 2030, a reduction in consumption of 236 billion kilowatt hours by 2030 from the base 2008 forecast.
Two years ago, AEP set a goal to reduce demand by 1,000 MW by 2012. We have identified customer programs to achieve more than half — 561 MW — toward this goal. We will complete market potential studies in most of our 11 states this year to identify other demand response and energy efficiency opportunities. And, in response, we are setting a new goal to reduce energy consumption by 2,250,000 megawatt hours (MWh) by 2012. This represents 1 percent of energy sales and is the equivalent of the electricity needed to power 200,000 homes for a year. It is based on the EPRI study, but once we have all of our market potential studies completed, we will re-evaluate it. We also are making progress reducing
our energy use within our own facilities. In 2008, we reduced consumption by 4.2 percent over 2007.
