Peter Miller, Senior Scientist, San Francisco

III. Bringing the Market to the Product

At the same time the CFL was being developed into a marketable product, the energy efficiency industry was developing into a formidable market force. Many states had adopted legislative and regulatory policies mandating the treatment of energy efficiency as a resource for utility investment on par with, or ahead of, traditional supply-side investments. As a result, utility investments in energy efficiency were large and growing rapidly with utility and third-party programs mobilizing hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to invest in efficiency programs annually. These efforts included mail-in rebates for CFLs to lower their cost and attract the attention of reluctant consumers. While the programs helped drive increased CFL purchases, the administrative cost of these retail-level efforts was relatively high, making it difficult to scale up to a much larger endeavor.

Against this backdrop of growing strength, the innovative ‘‘Golden Carrot’’ program to increase the energy efficiency of refrigerators provided a key lesson. Up to that point, utility efficiency programs were largely run at the retail level, making incremental improvements by offering incentives and information to individual consumers. In contrast, the Natural Resources Defense Council ...

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