NEWS RELEASE
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Residential and commercial electricity customers in Estes Park Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland saved 19,700 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy through the Efficiency Works Program in 2021, enough to power 2,518 homes for a year.
The energy savings in 2021 further prevented approximately 14,906 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere, roughly equal to removing 3,231 cars from regional roads for a year, based on the EPA subregion’s emission rates.
“Active engagement by customers to manage their energy use is key to achieving a noncarbon electric future,” said Jason Frisbie, general manager and CEO of Platte River Power Authority, which administers the Efficiency Works program on behalf of the four owner communities. “More than one third of our energy production comes from noncarbon resources and we’ll take yet more aggressive steps to decarbonize, but in order to achieve our goals, we need support from customers in our communities.”
Efficiency Works helps residential and commercial customers of Platte River Power Authority’s owner communities improve their energy efficiency through energy advising, assessments, rebates and additional offerings.
Since the owner communities combined efforts to form the Efficiency Works program in 2014, commercial and residential customers have reduced their electric usage by 178,253 MWh, approximately equal to the average annual energy consumed by 22,783 homes, saving 134,873 metric tons of carbon from being produced, approximately equal to the carbon consumed by more than two million tree seedlings grown for 10 years.
Efficiency Works will evolve in the coming years, continuing to be a significant part of the communities’ distributed energy resource (DER) development. DERs are physical or virtual devices or systems, such as distributed generation and energy storage, beneficial electrification, demand response and energy efficiency, that can be deployed on the electric distribution system or on customer premises that can be used to provide value to all customers through electric system optimization and/or individual customer benefits.
“Efficiency Works was our initial DER program and it will continue to play a significant role as customers join us in our pursuit of a 100% noncarbon energy future for our owner communities,” added Frisbie.
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