We have the tools and smarts to create a greener energy future

Can we really go "green" to achieve big-time energy savings?

For one solution hidden in plain sight, look outside at the streetlight closest to you. Energy-wise, it's probably a Neanderthal — burning significant power dusk to dawn, based on old technology, its glow polluting the night skies.

In just the top 10 U.S. metro areas, the 4.4 million streetlights each year burn roughly 3 billion kilowatts of power, sending 2.3 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

But the kilowatts, the carbon emissions and the dollar costs to local governments could be cut in half. That's the claim of Robert Grow, director of government relations for the Greater Washington Board of Trade.

Grow's prescription: Replace all of today's sodium vapor and other older streetlights with the latest light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The payoff for our cities and suburbs: Daily energy use, dollar outlays and carbon emissions would fall dramatically; the LED bulbs would last far longer than current models; and the light could be directional, lowering light pollution from populated areas.

In fact, based on a system now being installed in Norway's capital, Oslo, Internet servers connected to an LED network can log and report energy consumption, collect information from traffic and weather sensors, calculate the availability of natural sunlight and moonlight, and make constant adjustments for optimal driving or walking conditions.

The LED installations are expensive but could be paid off by energy savings in roughly five years. The yearly savings for the 10 big metros would be the equivalent of taking 213,000 cars off the roads, or consuming 132 million fewer gallons of gasoline, according to Grow.

Are LEDs a rare exception? No way, I concluded recently after talking with Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, a major South-Midwest utility. Heavily coal-dependent, Duke is America's third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide and currently plans at least one major coal and one nuclear power plant to meet growing demand for electricity.

But Rogers' goal is to "de-carbonize" Duke's supply, not only through solar and wind power (which he expects to fall dramatically in price), but by a radical rewriting of the Charlotte, N.C.-based firm's mission. Today, he notes, utilities run on a "commodity" model — central power stations (many 40 to 50 years old) that create electric power and ship it out to customers — "the more the meters run, the more money we make."

Instead, Rogers wants a "save-a-watt" plan under which utilities like his would pay for inventive approaches — common-sense and/or high-tech — to help customers cut back radically on their energy use.

The funds could cover home weatherization, energy-efficient appliances, and incentives to contractors to build in more carbon-saving features. He even talks of "putting a portal or dashboard in every home and sensors in every energy-using application, with software to optimize your use." The little energy hogs scattered all over our homes — from standby functions of TVs to idle computers, from chargers for cellphones to lights left on in empty rooms — would be brought to heel.

Duke, Rogers suggests, would make its money by charging customers 85 percent to 90 percent of the cost of the energy-saving features or devices it installs for them. It would have power to cycle appliances like air conditioners on and off during the day to save overall system demand. And under the plan he's asking regulators in several states to approve, there'd be an independent auditor to assure the utility gets rewarded only for energy it actually saves.

"We'd have a new mission," says Rogers — "to make our customers' energy use the most efficient in the world." If it can come true, Rogers asserts he'd be more than happy to jettison the coal and nuclear expansion that Duke currently plans.

Would most utilities — by nature conservative and typically wedded to systems of big central power plants and what Rogers calls "dumb" analog grids — actually go "smart" by shifting to digital, decentralized networks and putting conservation first?

It's hard to tell — state deregulation will have to come first. But with a green light, Rogers hopes that as a third of his work force retires in the near future, Duke can recruit a new generation of workers enthused by the idea of creating the world's most energy-efficient systems — a "calling" generation in search of a mission.

The bottom line — with utilities just as with streetlights — is that new technologies and conservation can substitute for vast quantities of fossil-fuel-triggered carbon emissions and save dollars.

But there's no doubt: "Safe" politics, utilities wed to yesterday's technologies, and stuck-in-the-mud regulation won't get us there. The time to turn a new leaf has never been more urgent.

Neal Peirce's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com