Public utilities are spending less on efficiency and getting less for it. Last year, California’s publicly owned utilities spent 15 percent less on energy efficiency compared to 2009. Overall energy savings, including at peak periods, declined too, according to a new report. Munis collectively spent $123 million on energy efficiency in 2010 compared to $145 million the previous year. “The big drop off is largely due to the two largest utilities, they skewed the results dramatically,” Kae Lewis, one of the report’s authors in the California Energy Commission’s Demand Analysis Office, said during an Aug. 11 workshop. The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, in particular, “dropped their savings almost 50 percent between 2009 and 2010,” Lewis explained. She noted that at the same time there was an uptick in small and medium-sized utility energy efficiency spending. Lara Ettenson of the Natural Resources Defense Council said that despite the backward step from 2009 and 2010 regarding muni energy efficiency spending and savings things looked good overall. “We should focus on that there has been tremendous progress over the past five years,” she said. “If you look at this trend, I think it’s pretty incredible--saving customers more than a billion dollars, tripling energy savings.” The overall decline in the 2010 numbers is largely explained in the report by the LADWP’s completion of a large lighting program during 2009. The report documents the progress of California utilities’ in increasing energy efficiency as mandated by AB 2021. The legislation requires statewide development of estimates and targets of potential energy efficiency savings, as well as comparisons of public utilities’ annual targets with their actual savings and demand reductions. “LADWP had a small business program where they distributed almost like 3 million CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs),” Lewis said. “And that program didn’t carry over to 2010.” Although last year represented the first overall decrease in energy efficiency program spending since 2006, spending by small utilities actually increased by about 30 percent during the time period, while medium utilities’ rose about 11 percent, the data show. In 2010, the 39 reporting public utilities captured 523 GWh of savings, a decrease of 19 percent from 2009, according to the report. This represented an achievement of just 74 percent of the 2010 collective energy savings target set in 2007. Public utilities collectively provided 94 MW of peak savings in 2010, a 20 percent decrease from the prior year. The reported savings were 65 percent of the 2010 collective target set in 2007. By comparison, investor-owned utilities reported energy savings of 4,607 GWh and peak savings of 837 MW last year, exceeding 2010 California Public Utilities Commission-mandated goals. Also, their natural gas savings of 46 million therms was just short of the CPUC’s 2010 goals.