The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has released The 2011 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard, their annual report on the state of the states’ energy efficiency policies and practices. I previously discussed the 2010 Scorecard and the improvement still to come.
I’m glad to say that this year’s Scorecard shows some of that improvement for Midwest states. Within MEEA’s footprint, three of our states – Illinois, Michigan, and Nebraska – were among the top states showing the most improvement in their score from last year. Illinois and Michigan have made huge gains in their energy efficiency savings as utility programs that started several years ago have ramped up to higher savings levels, and more importantly for the Scorecard have evaluated and reported their savings achieved in their first program years – data that was used in this report. While Michigan and Illinois stakeholders were disappointed last year to not see their programs reflected in the Scorecard, they should be much more enthusiastic about this year’s results now that the available national-level data has caught up with what we already knew was happening at the state level. Nebraska showed great improvement in passing an updated building energy code which helped to boost their score.
| State | 2011 Rank | Change from 2010 Rank |
| Minnesota | *8 | 0 |
| Iowa | 11 | 1 |
| Wisconsin | 16 | -5 |
| Illinois | ↑*17 | 8 |
| Michigan | ↑*17 | 10 |
| Ohio | 24 | 3 |
| Indiana | 32 | -1 |
| Kentucky | 37 | -1 |
| Nebraska | ↑40 | 7 |
| South Dakota | 42 | -3 |
| Missouri | *44 | -1 |
| Kansas | 48 | -2 |
| North Dakota | 51 | 0 |
* = Tie ↑ =Most Improved
Much more information (122 pages worth) is contained in ACEEE’s Scorecard including individual rankings on utility efficiency programs, transportation, building energy codes, combined heat & power, government initiatives, and appliance standards. For the first time in the history of the Scorecard (this is the fifth), they show another state, Massachusetts, overtaking California for the #1 position. They also have collaborated this year with researchers from Humboldt State University and the Natural Resources Defense Council to present a methodology for an Energy Consumption Intensity measurement for the states that they hope will have future value as a way to evaluate states’ progress in increasing energy efficiency.
Congratulations to Michael, Max, Shruti, Anna, Sara, Seth, and Maggie at ACEEE for putting in all the effort in to compile all of this disparate, messy, often incomplete, and usually not that easy to find data into another great edition of the Scorecard.