Neoliberalizing negawatts: Governance of energy efficiency as accumulation strategy

Abstract

Energy efficiency represents a financial threat to energy companies. This paper examines how investor-owned electricity companies in North Carolina have turned the threat of energy efficiency – or “negawatts” – into a new arena of accumulation. They have done this by exploiting features of the North Carolina Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS), a law passed in 2007 that encourages energy efficiency. I argue that under REPS, electricity companies have positioned themselves, counter-intuitively, as the primary producers of less of their main product. As such, these companies have been awarded high rates of return for creating energy efficiency projects. This paper builds on previous research into how environmental crises like climate change have been turned into new opportunities for accumulation in the neoliberal era. It focuses on neoliberal accumulation in an understudied system (electricity), socio-nature (energy efficiency), and political economic context (the regulated monopoly). Through reregulation, REPS creates negawatts as a new monopoly product for IOUs, contrary to what might be expected from previous research on green neoliberalism which often emphasizes the processes of commodification. This case study offers insights into the kinds of accumulation tactics that may occur in other regulated monopoly political economic contexts. Illuminating these tactics can inform more equitable and sustainable energy efficiency policies and programs by focusing attention on the need for transparency, alternative energy efficiency producers, and diverse energy efficiency programs aimed at reducing energy poverty.