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A leader in conservation
For nearly 30 years, the Eugene Water & Electric Board has been a national leader in promoting strong and innovative conservation programs.

Today, the payoffs are evident in customers’ bills and in the financial savings for the utility:

• Customers are saving more than 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, or enough energy to supply 30,000 average homes with electricity for an entire year. The cumulative conservation efforts equal about 10 percent of the annual usage for all homes, businesses, schools and other customers in Eugene.
• The utility’s wholesale power bill has been reduced by $103 million. Had it not been for conservation, EWEB would now be buying much more power on the wholesale market, at higher prices.

In the beginning
EWEB’s current energy-efficiency program grew out of the first oil crisis in 1973-74 and the public’s interest in saving energy as an alternative to always providing for increased demand through construction of new power plants.

The roots of the program, now called Energy Management Services, began in 1976 when a group of EWEB employees visited Arkansas to see a model of the “Arkansas home.” The house “was so energy efficient it could be heated with a hair dryer,” recalls Mat Northway, who now head’s EWEB’s Energy Management Services department.

Back in Eugene, EWEB launched its first conservation program, called “Triple E,” which certified homes as energy efficient.

A year later, in 1977, EWEB commissioners authorized the utility’s first conservation center in downtown Eugene to promote energy efficient homes. By 1978, 1,200 homes had been “audited.”

In subsequent years, the program took off, especially following the Northwest Power Act in 1980, which provided funding through the Bonneville Power Administration to weatherize homes and promote other energy-efficiency measures.

Recognition due
As a leading proponent of conservation, EWEB received national and regional recognition for its work. Few state, regional or national energy-efficiency standards were enacted without EWEB’s participation and leadership. EWEB has received awards from the U.S. Department of Energy, BPA, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, and others.

The 5 percent solution
In 1997, with funding from BPA declining significantly, commissioners began devoting up to 5 percent of retail revenues to conservation and energy-efficiency programs. It is a level of funding that is virtually unmatched among the nation’s public and private utilities.

Some of the other accomplishments are staggering: More than 42,000 homes weatherized, 18,400 energy-efficient water heaters installed, 9,000 new energy-efficient homes built and certified, and more than $27 million in loans or cash incentives issued to businesses to help pay for energy-efficiency measures. All this produces energy savings greater than the output of a 45-megawatt power plant, which is greater that the annual combined output of EWEB’s four hydroelectric generators on the McKenzie River.

Find out more about EWEB’s energy-saving programs
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