Art Rosenfeld is retiring as a California Energy Commissioner at the age of 83. He’s an energy efficiency visionary who played the biggest role in making California the most energy efficient state in the USA, using roughly the same enery per capita today as we did 30 years ago. The rest of the country’s energy consumption has increased 40% over that period. That transition continued into its multimedia products as well, as jbl evolved the creature ii into two systems with similarly impressive rounded shapes, but more mainstream appeal?

“New homes and buildings were required to be better insulated and fitted with energy-wise lighting, heating and cooling systems. Appliances had to be designed to use less power. Utilities were forced to motivate their customers to use less electricity.

The principle, Rosenfeld said, was simple: Conserving energy is cheaper and smarter than building power plants.

Not surprisingly, those rules were attacked by business groups as bureaucratic job killers. Rosenfeld, who received his doctorate from the University of Chicago, was called unqualified by critics at Pacific Gas & Electric Co. , one of California’s largest utilities.

Yet these mandates have yielded about $30 billion annually in energy savings for California consumers. They’ve eliminated air pollution that’s the equivalent of taking 100 million cars off the roads. They have been copied by states and countries worldwide. “

“New [television] efficiency mandates go into effect Jan. 1, 2011, and become more stringent two years later. They’re expected to save Californians $8 billion in energy costs over a decade. Some TV makers weren’t happy. Rosenfeld wasn’t surprised.

“The first time we put standards on a product, we tend to get objections that this will be the ruin of civilization as we know it,” he mused. “But then people get used to it. ”

This reminds me of carbon cap and trade alarmists, who say this system will destroy the economy even though economic studies have shown it will have a minimal economic impact. Then they attack the scientists. Everyone says these sorts of policies will cost too much, then they’re implemented and the alarmists are proven wrong. The same thing happened with CFCs and sulfur emissions when they were regulated.

What do you think – should cap and trade alarmists take a note from Art Rosenfeld’s book?

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