Using a societal cost perspective to guide conservation planning encompasses your following attributes such as resource acquisition, environmental quality, economic development, and, to some extent, system efficiencies. If we do not quantify the value of environmental costs then, in addition to economic drivers, we do conservation to explicitly improve environmental quality and to compensate for degradation the electricity system is causing the environment. I would classify market transformation programs as a type of conservation activity that has the potential to be the most effective approach for achieving energy savings. It is not the reason we do conservation, but, in the market niches where a strategy can be employed to affect the whole market, then this approach has the potential to effect the greatest long term savings per each dollar invested. I acknowledge it as a critical criterion for success.
Customer satisfaction plays a key role on a few different levels.
At one level, customers, as part of the market chain of any product or service, have to desire or accept an energy efficiency modification to the products or services they purchase. Consumer acceptance of an energy efficient product is comparable to customer satisfaction. In a broader context, customers have to perceive value in the expenditure of these funds for conservation. I do not consider load management activities as priority conservation projects. They are an important part of Least Cost Planning, but are not conservation.