The Institute Index: Green Tidings

Here's the latest Institute Index, as featured in the Institute's bi-weekly email newsletter, Facing South. Don't get Facing South yet? Sign up in the box in the upper right hand corner today!

If the Southeast were an independent nation, its rank among the world's largest emitters of carbon dioxide: 10th

Amount the Southeast spends per resident annually to promote energy efficiency: $1

Amount New England spends: $12

Average annual energy bills for newly constructed, affordable homes in one Atlanta community: $1,200

Increase in total construction costs required to cut those bills by $400 a year: $500

Proportion of water in drought-afflicted Georgia used for cooling power plants: more than half

Total electricity sales of eight Southeastern utilities: 470,000 gigawatt-hours

Amount of renewable generation those eight utilities have access to: over 106,000 gigawatt-hours

Amount the Tennessee Valley Authority committed to invest in energy efficiency at its August 2007 board meeting: $22 million

What that represents per capita: $2.53

Utilities' national average per capita spending for energy efficiency in 2004: $4.93

Annual investment TVA could make if it spent 1 percent of revenues on energy efficiency: $97 million

Estimated number of jobs that a renewable energy standard would create in Tennessee: 40,000

Cost to N.C.-based Duke Energy for its proposed Save-a-Watt efficiency program: 2 cents/kilowatt-hour

Amount Duke Energy would charge its customers for the program: 5.2 cents/kilowatt-hour

Save-a-Watt's rank among the costliest utility efficiency programs for consumers: 1

Labels: energy policy, environment, facing south, institute index