Finally: A major politician who understands conservation

Including its economic and employment benefits

“Take THAT, Dick Cheney,” could have been the mantra of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's recent speech on Peak Oil and energy conservation. (Complete speech, in PDF format, here. Highlights follow.

First, he describes exactly HOW Cheney is wrong on conservation:

I will admit that the Vice President's skepticism about the benefits of efficiency may have made sense in 1970, when most people believed energy efficiency meant nothing more than wearing more sweaters in the winter.

But technology has marched on and, in the intervening years, the marginal cost of energy efficiency has plummeted while the marginal cost of energy generation has shot up.

In terms of dollars and cents, it now costs one-third as much to save a given amount of energy through efficiency programs as it does to produce the same amount of energy by building a new power plant. The fact is that energy efficiency now makes economic sense.

This is the logic that the Vice President misses - the simple idea that the cheapest and cleanest power plant in the world is the one you never have to build.

In addition to conservation being “cheaper” than it ever was, you just can't argue against the simplicity of that last paragraph.

But, how do you make conservation work for an electric utility's bottom line? Well, Spitzer has ideas on that:

First, we must eliminate a perverse incentive in the marketplace that discourages utilities from conserving energy. The problem is that we want utilities to encourage their customers to conserve - but right now, when their customers conserve energy, the utility loses money. Obviously, this incentive structure is upside down if our goal is to increase energy efficiency.

Other states have done this. It works. Now, let's implement it.

Take that, too, Mr. VP.

And, Spitzer understands, unlike the doomsaying Darth Vader, that this will HELP not hurt the economy.

Think of all the high-paying jobs that will be needed to retrofit power plants, homes and office buildings so they can be more efficient; the jobs that will be needed to develop innovative efficiency and clean energy technologies; or the jobs that will be needed to manufacture the products at the scale that will be necessary to reach our goals.

So, why can't we get him to run for President? Seriously, I'd be likely to vote for Spitzer over any currently announced Democrat.