The Institute for Social Inventions maintains a computer database of good ideas from around the world. One such idea from Bill Berkowitz of Arlington, Massachusetts, strikes me as a painless way for the UK government to begin alleviating the greenhouse effect: simply require the privatised companies to offer rebates to customers who reduce their total consumption by fixed percentages from the previous year.
While inefficient users have to pay unnecessarily high bills, efficient users already benefit directly from the savings resulting from their own decisions.
It could clearly distort these end-use decisions if consumers were simply paid for not using electricity, by whatever means. And its impact on the costs of the suppliers would be differential, depending, for example, on whether savings were made at peak.
Rebates will, however, be a matter for commercial decision by the supply company concerned.
John Wakeman, Dept of Energy, 1 Palace St, London SW1E 5HE (tel 071 238 3290).
Changes in the price-setting formulas by the state regulators are one of the big reasons for the electicity utilities new-found enthusiasm for conservation. They are now allowed to recover ten per cent of the 'avoided costs' of having to provide new power stations and generating capacity: ie to make price increases that let it claw back ten per cent of the savings its customers achieve through conservation. Thus Duke Power in the Carolinas presents its customers with a cheque for $50 when they install an energy-efficient refrigerator. And it gives credits of about $25m a year to the power-hungry mills in return for their agreeing to have their power supplies interrupted at times of peak load (with thirty minutes' warning).
Standing charges are obviously a regressive tax, ensuring that those who save fuel most are penalised most - for example my one therm's consumption of gas during a quarter costs me in aggregate L7-96 per therm. Likewise with the L100 car licence fee, light users pay the same as heavy fuel users.