Energy Efficiency
Minnesota ranks eighth in the nation in efficiency
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released its 2011 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard yesterday, ranking Minnesota eighth in the nation in energy efficiency. The scorecard compares each state’s energy-efficiency policies in six ways: utility and public benefits programs and policies, transportation policies, building energy codes, combined heat and power, state government initiatives, and appliance efficiency standards.
While Minnesota made it into the top 10 this year—the only Midwest state to do so—the scorecard notes that all 50 states are facing challenges that could drop their standings in 2012. This includes insufficient access to reliable and recent data (such as building code compliance), strains on state budgets, and new rules from the EPA that might change reporting guidelines. Despite these potential hurdles, energy efficiency has an essential role to play. According to ACEEE, “Energy efficiency is a resource abundant in every state and reaching its full potential will be critical to meeting the environmental, economic, and reliability demands of the next century.”