Four Main Reasons for Why US Power Demand to Fall in the Next Decade

According to the analysis of Electric Power Research Institute, the US power demand will start to grow very slowly than what it used to be in the last decade. Taking a look back at the previous record, since 1980 to 2000, the growth rate is about 2.5% per year but this rate started to slow down to 2% per year from 2000 to 2011. By looking closer to the government policy and the economic condition, a good conclusion has come up that the growth rate will be 0.5 percent a year in the next decade.

Well it is not the first thing to see the slow growth rate since now the US is already in bad economic condition already.

Behind this slow rate, some factors were raised to support this conclusion:

• Low power consummation electronic stuffs are encourage. The government has spent $11 billion to boost local program supporting purchasing energy-efficient appliances and other subsidies. Moreover now 28 stats already approved the law to other manufactures to encourage their customers to purchase those energy saving stuffs.
• Power saving lighting. Lighting up the bulbs takes around 10 to 15% of the overall power used in each household. Now with the implementation of new power saving bulbs, the energy usage is dropped by 80%.
• High gas price force to lower use. It is quite clear learn to understand that the high gas and doldrums price will force the overall usage to drop.
• Unemployment, weak economic and high price house will force some family member to share the same household especially teenagers. Lesser people won’t want to move into a big house

Source: AP News