Thus highly efficient use of electricity, far from being a luxury of the rich, is a necessity especially of the poor. The shortfall is a recipe for non-development. This is most vital in the poorest countries, where unneeded power-plant investments to run those inefficient lights, motors, and appliances diverts capital from such basic needs as clean water, infant vaccination, female literacy. But until governments realign utilities' missions to meeting customers' needs at least cost, most of the available capital and talent will continue to be misdirected. Most American utilities already finance customers' efficiency improvements, via concessionary loans, gifts, rebates, or leases, whenever efficiency costs less than supply.
Customers can then compare ways to save or make electricity on an equal footing.
Today, newer implementation methods can do even better by making saved electricity into a fungible commodity. Eight states make all ways to produce or save electricity compete at open auction. Some utilities trade saved electricity, and are considering rewarding customers for going bounty-hunting and saving other customers' electricity. Some electric utilities sell electric efficiency in other utilities' territories, and gas utilities are about to. Whatever the means of implementation, electric efficiency offers canny industrialists and developers a big competitive edge, even in existing facilities.