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Gas Efficiency

Using Natural Gas More Efficiently: Saving Money and Protecting Our Western Way of Life

Executive Summary

The United States depends on natural gas for many purposes. It heats an increasing number of our homes. It is increasingly used to generate electricity. And it is used in manufacturing processes and as a feedstock for making products such as fertilizers. Clearly, natural gas is an integral part of our energy infrastructure.

However, in the last several years the price of natural gas roughly doubled as supplies have tightened. High prices are straining residential consumers’ and businesses’ budgets, driving some jobs overseas, and are forcing a re-evaluation of the role natural gas plays in generating electricity even as we are trying to reduce pollution from electrical energy production.

Intense natural gas exploration and development activities here in the Intermountain West threaten to transform parts of the West from wide-open spaces that are home to grizzlies, mountain lions, pronghorn antelope, mule deer, and elk to places dominated by pump jacks, pipelines, roads, and compressor stations. Even then, the gap between supply and demand for natural gas in the United States will grow.

This report shows there is a better way. A concerted initiative to encourage efficiency investments that could significantly and cost-effectively reduce the demand for natural gas needed for our homes, stores, factories, and power plants. In particular, we found that:

• We could reduce natural gas use in our homes by 5–25 percent;
• We could reduce natural gas usage in the commercial sector by 7–11 percent;
• In industry, savings could be as high as 11 percent;
• Cost savings by the year 2020 may exceed $11 billion—far more than offsetting the cost of making these energy efficiency investments;
• A combination of efficiency and renewable energy investments would reduce natural gas usage in generating electrical energy just in the Interior West by 47 percent by 2020; and
• Reductions in demand due to energy efficiency and renewable energy could significantly reduce the price of natural gas.

Demand reductions would make our industries more competitive in the world marketplace and ease the energy cost burden on American families. They would reduce pollution. They can be implemented quickly and begin yielding energy savings immediately—there are no long lead times in drilling for efficiency. Finally, by reducing demand for natural gas we could create some breathing room so federal land managers could plan more carefully and manage energy development better so that we can both produce energy from the public lands and protect our Western way of life.

Download the full report (PDF, 2.5 mb)