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How California is Conserving Electricity
Under California state law, the state's largest utility companies need to try to reach a goal of saving over 23,000 gigawatt-hours per year of electricity from 2004 to 2013. That will conserve enough electricity to power about 2.3 million homes.
A draft plan that was issued earlier this month by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) would implement and extend the plan by that requires 16,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity to be conserved from 2012 to 2020. The CPUC stated that such cuts would eliminate the need for nine 500-megawatt natural gas-fired power plants.
To time with this, PG&E Corp. utility Pacific Gas & Electric, Edison International utility Southern California Edison and Sempra Energy unit San Diego Gas & Electric released plans Tuesday detailing how they plan to conserve electricity and save energy from 2009 to 2011.
As an example, Southern California Edison proposed to spend over $1.3 billion to conserve about 6,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity between 2009 and 2012. Like the other plans, Edison's plan would be financed with public money collected through surcharges on customers' bills.
In addition to these measures taken by the utilities and the state, the California state plan includes conservation from tighter appliance and building standards as well as through broader use of more efficient, energy conserving lighting.
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