Spreading deserts threaten world food supply

By Robert Evans

GENEVA (Reuters) – Spreading deserts and degradation of farm land due to climate change will pose a serious threat to food supplies for the world’s surging population in coming years, a senior United Nations scientist warned on Friday.

M.V.K. Sivakumar of the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the crunch could come in just over a decade as all continents see more weather-related disasters like heat waves, floods, landslides and wildfires.

“Should we worry about land being degraded? Yes,” Sivakumar, who leads the WMO’s agricultural meteorology division, told a news conference in Geneva.

“Today we feed the present world population of 6.3 billion from the 11 per cent of the land surface that can be used for serious food production. The question is: Will we be able to feed the 8.2 billion that we expect to populate the globe in 2020 if even less land is available for farming?,” he said.

Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia — where the climate is already more extreme and arid regions are common — will be most affected as rainfall declines and its timing becomes less predictable, making water more scarce, he said.

But Europe, particularly around the Mediterranean, would also suffer from heat waves like those that this summer have led to devastating fires in Greece.

Declining rainfall and evaporation of water supplies could also mean less was available for irrigation and for generating electricity for farm machinery, causing lower crop productivity.

Sivakumar said that in some regions the spread of deserts and the salination of once arable land was already well under way. In the future it would be most widespread in drier areas of Latin America, including in farming giant Brazil.

In Africa, increasing climate variability would create major problems for farmers, who are likely to see their growing seasons getting shorter and crop yields cut, especially in areas near already arid and semi-arid regions.

Sivakumar, speaking on the eve of a U.N. conference on desertification in Madrid from September 3-14, said it was vital for the international community to help put innovative and adaptive land-management practices into action.

These should be targeted at preserving land and water resources. But a return to mixing crops, rather than focusing on single-crop production based on intensive use of fertilizers, could also help face the challenge, he said.

Ireland Getting Hotter, Wetter

By Shawn Pogatchnik
Associated Press Writer

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) — Ireland’s average temperature has been rising at twice the global rate since the early 1980s and parts of the country are becoming wetter and more prone to flooding due to climate change, a government-funded report said Wednesday.

The report found that Ireland’s average temperature has been rising at the rate of 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1980. It said six of Ireland’s 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 1990, and forecast that heatwaves would increase in severity, frequency and length.

The study, compiled by National University of Ireland climatologists for the Environmental Protection Agency, also found that rainfall was increasing in both volume and intensity along Ireland’s Atlantic coastline, but was relatively unchanged in the more heavily populated east.

A co-author of the report, John Sweeney, said Ireland’s temperatures began rising in the early 1980s, unlike the global norm, which experienced rises from the mid-1970s. The fact that Ireland is surrounded by water may have been a reason for the delay, he said.

Since then, however, Ireland has been “making up for lost time … and warming at roughly twice the rate of the global average,” Sweeney said. The country’s minimum daily temperatures have been rising more quickly than maximum afternoon temperatures, in part because of increased cloud cover at night from moister air, he said.

A series of EPA-sanctioned studies have forecast that Ireland will face water-supply shortfalls within the coming two decades, particularly in Dublin, home to a third of the country’s 4.2 million people, and Ireland’s sunniest corner in the southeast. Dublin has only a single source of drinking water that is currently running to within 1 percent of capacity.

“We’re putting the people where we have the least water availability, and also where climate change will further squeeze them in terms of less rainfall in the future,” Sweeney said.

Dublin City Council planners have already rejected the idea of diverting water from Ireland’s largest river, the Shannon in the west – a proposal with unknown ecological implications.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic-exposed west will be increasingly prone to floods and soil erosion due to heavy rains, the EPA said.

Ireland, a car-dependent society with a rapidly expanding economy, has been unable to cut its production of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, a leading cause of global warming. Under its commitments to the Kyoto treaty, Ireland is supposed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 60 million tons annually by next year, but currently emits close to 70 million tons.

To achieve an artificial cut, the government has set aside $370 million to buy carbon credits from foreign companies and other countries that are emitting less than their Kyoto-specified limits. But the actual level of pollution in Ireland is expected to keep rising.

Mary Kelly, EPA director general, said that even with a cutback in emissions, the country will likely still be affected by higher average temperatures, declining frosty periods and heavier rainfalls in coming years because of the level of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.

U.N. hopes for climate deal in 2009

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

VIENNA (Reuters) – The U.N.’s top climate official said on Tuesday that agreeing on a global deal by the end of 2009 to combat climate change would be ideal but noted much needs to be done.

“There is this sense of urgency, we do need to get it completed as quickly as possible,” Yvo de Boer told Reuters on the fringe of talks on global warming grouping 158 nations.

Many experts say 2009 is the latest practical date to agree a climate pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. Any firm building a coal-fired power plant or a wind farm needs to know rules for greenhouse gas emissions years in advance.

“So finalizing things in 2009 would be ideal. But we also have to be realistic about the amount of work that needs to be done,” de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said.

About 1,000 delegates are meeting in Vienna from August 27-31 to review ways to slow warming.

And 2009 has become a matter of prestige for the United States and other rich nations in the Group of Eight.

They agreed in June that they wanted agreement by the end of 2009 on a long-term U.N. plan to fight global warming, partly in response to warnings of ever more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.

“We managed to negotiate Kyoto in two years. This is a lot more complicated,” de Boer said.

The U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, negotiated from 1995 to 1997, binds 35 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by five percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Most of the emissions are gases released by burning fossil fuels.

“For the time being 2009 is what we should be working towards,” de Boer said when asked if talks might slip to 2010.

Many governments want environment ministers, who will meet in Bali, Indonesia, in December, to launch two-year negotiations to agree a broader international treaty to replace Kyoto.

A new pact would seek to involve the United States, the top emitter of greenhouse gases which is outside Kyoto, and get developing nations such as China and India to do more to brake their sharply rising emissions.

“I think there will be an agreement in 2009,” said Hans Verolme, climate expert at the WWF environmental group, noting a growing sense of urgency.

Warming-fueled hurricanes need new tactics-experts

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) – Global warming is expected to cause more severe hurricanes, and that means U.S. communities will need new tactics to minimize storm damage, emergency preparedness experts said on Monday.

These tactics range from restoring wetlands — which may actually slow down approaching storms — to making homes and other structures better able to withstand hurricanes to organizing finances so more can be spent on prevention, the panel of experts said.

Peter Webster, who teaches environmental engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, noted the consequences of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the U.S. Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005.

“We have a choice … of being able to take hits like Katrina and pay the cost of $150 to $200 billion and many, many lives, or we have the choice of spending perhaps one-tenth or one-twentieth of that per year in hardening our infrastructure,” Webster said.

Many scientists, including most of those working with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have reported a link between global warming and the severity of hurricanes.

World surface temperatures have risen about 1 degree F (.55C) over the last 100 years, and are forecast to rise further this century. Because hurricanes feed on warm ocean water, some climate scientists foresee more severe hurricanes.

COSTLIEST NATURAL DISASTERS

Hurricanes account for nine of the 10 costliest U.S. natural disasters since 1989, with Hurricane Katrina at the top of the list with $125 billion in damage and 1,833 deaths, according to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The only non-hurricane on the list was the Northridge, California, earthquake of 1994.

These statistics were cited in a report on how to cope with the stronger hurricanes expected to be associated with increased global warming, issued by the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, which also convened the forum where Webster and others spoke.

Jane Bullock, who was chief of staff at FEMA during the Clinton administration and now is based at George Washington University, said local community efforts including government, business, universities and environmental groups can be effective in mitigating the worst hurricanes’ effects.

“We know it works, it worked in the 1990s,” Bullock said. “It saves money. For every one dollar invested in mitigation, there’s four dollars in benefits.”

Bullock said one good mitigation project for coastal communities most vulnerable to hurricanes is to retain or restore wetlands.

Wetlands, which used to be drained as a matter of course in the United States, provide flood control by absorbing excess water during storms, filter pollutants before they enter streams, lakes and oceans and protect coastal areas from erosion, according to a 2006 Government Accountability Office report.

Kyoto gives chemical plants windfall: UNEP

By Gerard Wynn

LONDON (Reuters) – Chemical plants in China can earn substantial windfall profits by destroying powerful greenhouse gases, underlining the need for changes to the rules of a Kyoto Protocol incentives scheme, a U.N. report shows.

Western investors who trade carbon credits may also make windfall profits from the scheme in its present form, Reuters data show.

China, with its fast-growing economy, has become crucial to the global fight against climate change.

It is set to overtake the United States this year as the biggest emitter of the commonest greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

But it has also become a big beneficiary of incentives to destroy more powerful greenhouse gases, through a scheme set up under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Those incentives now appear very generous, the report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) showed.

Factories in China, and others in India, Mexico, Argentina and South Korea, will earn up to 10 times more money than they actually need to destroy the powerful greenhouse gases, the report found.

It suggested that “national levies are applied to limit the financial gain of individual manufacturers,” after the first cycle of project funding ends in seven years.

Kyoto is meant to fight global warming, and allows rich countries to buy carbon offsets, or carbon credits, which help them meet limits on their emissions by paying for emissions cuts in developing nations.

The refrigerant industry in developing countries produces greenhouse gases so powerful that destroying them earns factories and their investors millions of such credits.

The projects, based especially in China, have proved controversial, both because western speculators have profited, and because they may inadvertently drive up output of the greenhouse gas, called HFC 23.

The scheme, called the clean development mechanism (CDM), is the best available for now, the report said.

“The CDM itself is the only reliable mechanism available to prevent HFC 23 emissions in the short term,” the report said.

HOT AIR

The scheme is so generous that chemical plants will earn more money destroying the greenhouse gas, previously an unintended waste product, than producing the refrigerant gas, it said.

They will earn up to $880 million a year from selling carbon credits, compared with up to $510 million from selling the refrigerant gas.

Such distortions may make the resulting carbon credits mere “hot air,” because without the scheme factories would probably be more efficient, adopting widely available technologies that cut production of the greenhouse gas, said Stanford University’s Michael Wara.

HFC projects account for more than half of all emissions cuts achieved under the CDM so far.

Western investors, such as London-based Climate Change Capital and New York-based Natsource, may also earn windfall profits from the scheme.

HFC projects will generate more than 600 million tonnes of carbon credits in their first seven years — the usual crediting period — the UNEP report says.

Investors based in London and New York have bought carbon credits from chemical plants for as little as 6 euros per tonne, and can now sell them at 16 euros per tonne, Reuters data show.

Governments that signed the Kyoto Protocol will discuss changes to the rules of the carbon trading scheme at a meeting in December in Bali, Indonesia.

Smell of floating corpses adds to S.Asia flood woes

PATNA, India, (Reuters) – Residents in eastern India complained on Wednesday about the smell of corpses floating in flood waters as the toll from widespread monsoon flooding in South Asia rose by 68 overnight.

Close to 1,800 people have died from drowning, house collapses, snakebite and waterborne diseases in the densely populated and largely impoverished region since July, as heavy monsoon rains caused numerous rivers to burst their banks.

Millions of people are living in miserable conditions — many of them homeless or stranded on crowded embankments — with relief operations patchy in many areas.

Some parts of eastern India and Bangladesh have remained flooded for weeks, causing a spike in waterborne diseases.

In India’s eastern region, at least 300,000 people were suffering from diarrhoea and other waterborne illnesses, with complaints that authorities were not doing enough to assist them.

In the impoverished Indian state of Bihar, residents and officials said dozens of bodies could be seen floating in flood waters in the worst-hit districts.

“The unbearable stench of rotting corpses floating in the water has made us sick,” Anupiya Devi, a resident of Samastipur district, told reporters.

Authorities said many bodies were yet to be identified.

BRIMMING CUP OF WOES

The widespread flooding has led to nearly 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of cultivable land being submerged in Bihar, resulting in a steep rise in vegetable prices.

In West Bengal state, which neighbours Bihar, authorities asked the Indian army to help relief and rescue operations with over 1.1 million people affected by fresh flooding over the past week across four districts.

In West Midnapore district, people shouting “we want food” protested against the pace of the relief effort.

Further south, in the mineral-rich state of Orissa, which shares a border with West Bengal, flood waters have affected 1.2 million people, and destroyed thousands of homes, officials said.

More than 100,000 people were marooned. Authorities were finding it difficult to reach them due to a shortage of boats.

“Most areas are still not accessible and we are trying to reach flood victims,” said A.C. Parihari, a senior official, speaking from Bhubaneswar, the state capital.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, flood waters that had inundated over half the riverine, low-lying nation were receding.

As the water levels fell, more bodies were found.

Overnight, the toll in one of the world’s poorest nations from weeks of monsoon flooding rose by 23 — including two from diarrhoea — pushing the total number of fatalities to 638.

At least 73,000 cases of diarrhoea have been reported since late July. Many people are unable to access safe drinking water in flooded areas.

Monsoon flooding in South Asia is an annual phenomenon but this year’s particularly heavy rainfall in eastern India has led to some experts blaming climate change as one possible cause.

Government ineptitude in preparing and dealing with the floods has made a bad situation even worse, they add.

(Additional reporting by Bappa Majumdar in Kolkata, a Reuters reporter in Bhubaneswar and Azad Majumdar in Dhaka)

Washington wants to cut greenhouse gas levels to 1990 rate by 2020

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Washington and seven other Western states and Canadian provinces Wednesday staked out a regional goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, partly by creating a trading block for pollution credits and requiring less-polluting vehicles.

The agreement targets a 15 percent reduction in the production of planet-warming gases, compared with 2005 levels, over the next 13 years.

Washington has a more ambitious goal of reducing levels of the gases to 1990 levels by 2020. A wide-ranging panel appointed by Gov. Chris Gregoire is expected to recommend early next year how to meet that goal and go on to slash emissions to 50 percent of 1990 levels by midcentury.

The goal announced Wednesday is for Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington and the provinces of British Columbia and Manitoba. Several other states are observing and could join in the future.

The agreement does not require any states or provinces to do anything they were not already committed to, said Janice Adair of the Washington Ecology Department, who is the state’s representative on the Western Climate Initiative.

However, over the next year, the states and provinces will try to work out the details of a “cap and trade” program.

That would systematically reduce the amount of greenhouse gases allowed to be produced in the states that sign on. Businesses or others that are able to reduce their emissions more than required would be rewarded because they could sell their rights to emit to others who have trouble meeting their goals.

The idea is to provide powerful economic incentives to do the right thing — but working out the details promises to be quite difficult.

“How we do all that and come to the table — eight very different (states and provinces) — and try to negotiate the best deal we can, and not have anyone go away feeling they got rolled, is going to be very difficult,” Adair said.

Several environmental groups welcomed the goal, which Sierra Club spokesman Rob Smith said was “a good first step, but it’s a modest one compared to all that needs to be done.”

Added Smith: “Hopefully this will lead to some pressure for Congress to take this step on a national level.”

Grant Nelson of the Association of Washington Business has been monitoring the state’s efforts.

“We need to move forward very cautiously, and make sure we don’t put our state at a competitive disadvantage,” he said.

Already, though, the states are promising different levels of reductions. Arizona and New Mexico are promising reductions over their 2000 emissions, while Washington and California used 1990 as a base year, promising 15 percent reductions. Oregon used 1990 as a base year and promised a 10 percent cut by 2020.

Governors of the states involved, except Utah, created the Western Climate Initiative in February, pledging to work together to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Utah, British Columbia and Manitoba subsequently joined the group, and a joint announcement by the eight states and provinces Wednesday said all agreed to the regional goal.

“Our collective commitment will build a successful regional system to be linked with other regional efforts across the nation and eventually the world,” California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a prepared statement released with the announcement.

Each state and province will take steps on its own, but collectively they are committed to design a market-based system such as the cap-and-trade program planned by California.

Steps being taken by individual states include mandating the use of renewable energy sources, imposing performance standards on new power plants and buying alternative-fuel vehicles.

Special Report: Green Power — The NeW Generation

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

In the name of fighting climate change, solar, geothermal, wave and tidal energy are getting a new look.

Wanted: More green power
Washington utilities have their marching orders: Make more energy, and make it green. In the name of fighting climate change, renewable sources once on the fringe — solar, geothermal, wave and tidal — are getting a second look.

Expect gridlock along road to renewable energy
In the push to add more renewable energy sources such as wind, sun or waves to our power system, there’s a big obstacle to this shiny techno-green future: the grid. A look at the options

Wind power catches on; towers not so popular
Today, Washington ranks only behind Texas when it comes to the creation of new wind power. Yet wind power still meets strong resistance.

Biodiesel turning wheels, not turbines
Although biodiesel is hailed as an environmentally friendly savior in the transportation field, in the electricity sector, it’s barely a drop in the renewable fuels bucket. Even the requirements of Initiative 937 won’t likely change that.

Costs keep solar on the sidelines, at least for now
With the passage of Initiative 937 forcing utilities to look for alternative energy sources, and production of Washington-made solar equipment coming on line, experts predict solar power will soar like mercury in an August thermometer.

Puget Sound area leads the charge to tidal energy
Until recently, power projects aimed at harvesting energy from waves or tides haven’t received anywhere near the same kind of enthusiasm or financial backing as the push into wind power. But lately there has been a sea change in activity.

Geothermal plants would tap ‘Ring of Fire’
This would seem an obvious spot to pursue geothermal power, energy created by capturing the Earth’s subterranean heat. But only now does it look as if this region may finally exploit the hot-rock power lurking beneath our feet.

Ranchers turning cow manure into kilowatt-hours
Turning cow manure into kilowatts isn’t the sexiest way to develop renewable energy, but that and other biomass projects in the region are firing up.

Eco-millionaires see boom times ahead

By Chris Wills

LONDON (Reuters) – Mankind’s response to climate change will shift how the world gets its energy and is already making “green barons” out of early investors in renewable energy, clean technologies and carbon trading.

Reuters spoke to four entrepreneurs who are cashing in on the energy revolution and who say there is more money to be made.

BRUCE KHOURI, co-founder of Solar Integrated Technologies, based in Los Angeles, has at the age of 48 made $5 million by cashing in shares in the company.

He still has a $11 million stake in the company, which makes lightweight solar panels for commercial roofs. He saw the opportunity while running his own industrial roofing firm.

Q: How did you get rich?

A: “It hasn’t been easy but we transformed an old-world roofing material into a renewable energy technology. It’s a miracle Solar Integrated is still here but a pioneer charging across the prairie is bound to get hit by a few arrows.”

As long ago as the early 1990s Khouri saw a market for flexible solar panels which could be laminated on to large roofs, such as warehouses. He did not found Solar Integrated until 2001 once tax and subsidy incentives made the market more attractive.

Q: Is ‘the business of green’ a bubble?

A: “No. For political reasons the United States has been behind others on green issues, but once it catches up it will be a domino effect. In 20 years they won’t talk about regular roofing because it just won’t exist … there is so much rooftop real estate that is completely under-utilized.

“And 50 years from now every bit of a building that is struck by the sun will be generating power in some way.”

PEDRO MOURA COSTA, co-founder of Oxford-based EcoSecurities, 44, made 4.8 million pounds ($10 million) when he sold some shares in the firm which helps convert emission cuts into tradable carbon credits. His remaining shares are worth about 37 million pounds ($73 million).

Q: How did you get rich?

A: “I saw the carbon market could be big business and the Kyoto Protocol confirmed my views. But I didn’t expect it to take 10 years to come into force.”

Moura Costa was working as a forester in Malaysia when he saw the potential for an international carbon credit market.

He spent the early 1990s advising on a project to plant trees in Borneo to compensate for extra carbon pollution from new power plants in the Netherlands.

Q: Is ‘the business of green’ a bubble?

A: “No. It’s become quite obvious we do something now or it will be an irreversible trend with catastrophic consequences.

“The only chance of it being a bubble is if we lack the political commitment to drive emission reductions worldwide — and if we do that we might as well forget about any environmental effort whatsoever because climate change is hitting us hard and the trend is likely to accelerate. I think it’s very unlikely political support will go away.”

DAVID SCAYSBROOK, founder of Novera Energy, a 43-year old Australian, made 3 million pounds ($6 million) when he cashed in some of his shares in the wind power and landfill gas firm he founded in 1998. He has about 3 million pounds ($6 million) worth of shares invested in Novera and carbon cutter Camco International, which he advises.

Q: How did you get rich?

A: Three things had pushed up share valuations in the wind power industry, he said.

First, people were more worried about energy security and producing energy themselves. Second, the cost of traditional energy sources such as oil and gas had gone up. Third, tax breaks, subsidies and emissions caps had prompted even more conservative investors “to finally move off their perch”.

Q: Is ‘the business of green’ a bubble?

A: “The scale of investment to date is nothing compared to what is coming.

“The bubble aspect is ill-informed investors chasing pipe-dream technology. For example, there are hundreds of firms competing for the next generation of technology in solar panels but it won’t necessarily be the best technology that wins.”

NEIL ECKERT, chief executive of Climate Exchange, which runs the main European exchange for carbon trading, has shares worth about 18 million pounds ($36 million). He is also non-executive chairman of Trading Emissions and Econergy, both involved in emission-cutting projects and generating revenue from carbon credits.

Q: How did you get rich?

A: Despite the high paper value of his holdings in Climate Exchange, Eckert has yet to cash in. He already made millions selling his shares in Brit Insurance, which he set up and ran for 10 years until 2005.

Q: Is ‘the business of green’ a bubble?

A: “No. We have the biggest opportunity to replace fossil fuel, which has a market capitalization of hundreds of billions of pounds, but it’s vital we listen to the scientific consensus and create a financial solution.

“I believe we have a chance to meet the stated mitigation targets much quicker than people think … but it depends on whether people believe money can be made.”

(Additional reporting by Gerard Wynn)

There’s power in conservation

By Lisa Stifller
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Saving energy is like creating new energy — and it’s easy to do

At the Cougar Mountain Baking Co., the lights overhead used to buzz. The cavernous freezer, big as a two-car garage, was dark and shadowy. The fluorescent bulbs cast a greenish pall over trays of golden snickerdoodles.

The lights sucked up energy like an insatiable black hole.

In April, founder David Saulnier pulled the plug on the decades-old lights at his Magnolia bakery. He spent about $8,000 to install 54 new fixtures with the most energy-efficient fluorescent lights available.

They consume two-thirds the amount of juice. They illuminate quickly and silently. They need to be changed only once every three to four years. They shine with a lovely white glow.

The changes do more than showcase chocolate chunk and peanut butter cookies. Energy-smart upgrades by Cougar Mountain Baking — and businesses and residents everywhere — are a crucial part of saving power and slowing global warming.

They also fulfill key requirements of Initiative 937, the voter-approved energy initiative that calls for increased use of renewable energy sources combined with cutting consumption.

Boosting conservation in businesses and homes is critical to those goals, but it’s still slow going in many parts of Washington.

“It seems very clear to me that there are efficiency improvements out there that are spectacular,” said Sara Patton, executive director of the NW Energy Coalition, a Seattle-based non-profit group. “We’re beginning to scrape the surface.”

Saulnier agrees, and hopes his actions are an inspiration.

“I want other businesses to know that this is possible,” he said. “Every watt we save is energy we don’t have to generate in some nasty way.”

Bean counters at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center like what conservation does for the bottom line. The 13-building campus was built to be energy efficient and is routinely examined for upgrades. The newest building contains more than 3,000 sensors that automatically turn off lights and computer monitors when people leave. They detect daylight and adjust lighting accordingly.

At the home of online retail giant Amazon.com, investing in lighting upgrades and improvements to the heating and cooling system have to pay for themselves in energy savings — and it needs to be quick.

“We typically look for a 3 1/2-year payback at the most,” said Brian Buckland, a chief engineer at Wright Runstad & Co., which manages and subleases the Amazon building on Beacon Hill.

It’s a funny idea — that saving energy is like creating new energy, that saving 1,000 megawatts by installing more efficient air conditioning units in an office building or packing the attic with insulation is akin to building a wind farm with hundreds of turbines cranking out the same amount of power. Yet by using less energy, utilities can add customers without constructing new power plants.

In the past two decades, Washington has saved about 14 million megawatt-hours of power through better energy efficiency. That’s enough power to light and heat about 1 million average homes a year.

The state ranked sixth nationally last year for its conservation efforts, as scored by the non-profit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Vermont, Connecticut and California tied for first.

When it comes to conservation, “we treat it as a resource,” said Cal Shirley, vice president for energy efficiency at Puget Sound Energy, an acknowledged leader in the field.

Other utilities, particularly those in slower-growing Eastern Washington counties, haven’t pursued efficiency with the same enthusiasm. Pretty soon, they won’t have a choice.

I-937 requires the state’s largest electric utilities to capture all of the “cost-effective conservation” available in their service area. If they don’t, they face a $50 per megawatt-hour fine.

Beginning in 2010, the utilities will start setting two-year conservation goals mandated by I-937. Independent oversight agencies and auditors will review the targets and their performance.

Puget Sound Energy already has laid out some of its goals. Through conservation programs, it’s working to save the greenhouse gas equivalent of taking 255,000 cars off the road each year.

“We don’t see it as being easy to do,” Shirley said. “But we see it as necessary because it’s more cost effective.”

Conservation equals money

Thank California for the rebate on your new low-power washer-dryer and your double-pane windows.

Back in the mid-1970s, the Golden State was the growing state. Utilities were scrambling to satisfy new energy-hungry residents and businesses. They realized that making existing power go further was cheaper and smarter than new power plants.

That forced the federal government to take action. In 1975, Congress ordered the Department of Energy to set minimum energy-efficiency standards for consumer goods, including refrigerators, dishwashers, furnaces and hot-water heaters.

State and city governments across the country adopted building codes with strict conservation rules. Seattle has one of the nation’s more stringent efficiency codes for commercial building construction.

These conservation efforts are about more than environmental do-gooding. When they fail, it costs consumers — a lot.

In January, congressional investigators with the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Energy had failed to set new energy-efficiency standards for 20 product categories — in some cases missing deadlines by up to 15 years.

The GAO reported that “delays in setting standards for the four consumer product categories that consume the most energy — refrigerators and freezers, central air conditioners and heat pumps, water heaters and clothes washers — will cost at least $28 billion in forgone energy savings by 2030.”

The feds aren’t the only ones sluggish on energy conservation. Many utilities statewide have failed to meet conservation goals as well.

The rub comes because when there’s a surplus of cheap energy — say when an industrial plant closes or population growth is slow — there’s not a lot of incentive for encouraging conservation. After all, power companies make money by selling electricity, not saving it.

In recent years, Tacoma Power has lagged behind energy efficiency targets, achieving less than 20 percent of the 2005 regional goal. Businesses had closed and demand was down.

“There was a decision to go slow on investments in the conservation side,” said Bill Gaines, who took the helm of Tacoma Power earlier this year. That’s all in the past, he said. “Tacoma is about to launch a major scale-up of its conservation efforts.”

The utilities’ various programs — whether it’s giving coupons to residents for free high-efficiency light bulbs or providing rebates for upgraded boilers and industrial machinery — do require money up front. But the investment pays for itself in the long term, managers said.

“The utility would do this whether Initiative 937 were passed or not,” Gaines said. “It’s really the underlying economics of it.”

Start with bulbs

The curlicue compact fluorescent bulb is the unofficial mascot of energy conservation.

The shopping behemoth Wal-Mart aims to sell 100 million of them by the end of the year — the equivalent of one bulb for every three Americans.

The Web site 18seconds.org — so named for the amount of time it takes to change a light bulb — tracks the sales of the fluorescents nationwide. So far, about half a million have been sold in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue this year.

Those numbers could rise; Seattle City Light has arranged in-store discounts on the bulbs for its customers at stores including Costco, Home Depot and Bartell Drugs.

Fluorescent lights “are getting really good now. They’re getting small, they’re bright. Their color quality is better. If people haven’t been happy with them in the past, I encourage them to try again,” said Andrew Gibb, energy planning analyst with Seattle City Light.

They’re a good investment, too. “They will pay for themselves in a matter of months, rather than a matter of years.”

The bulbs are a start, but the potential for conservation is much bigger, and always evolving.

While a lot of attention is paid to new technology that leads to thinner, brighter TVs and faster, smaller computers, “some of those leaps are being made in the electricity industry,” said Elizabeth Klumpp, senior energy policy analyst for the Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development.

Saulnier, for one, is staying ahead of the curve.

He didn’t stop with his light fixtures. He installed an energy-efficient front-loading washer and dryer to launder towels and aprons. A few weeks ago, he traded his bulky water heater for the tankless variety, which heats water as it’s needed so it doesn’t sit around getting heated and reheated.

“It’s awesome,” Saulnier said of his new appliance. “It never runs out of hot water.”

(Editor’s note: This story has been changed since it was first published. Seattle City Light’s program to encourage customers to switch to fluorescent light bulbs was described incorrectly.)