Environmentalists have long been accused of disliking restructuring for this reason, since lower prices can be expected to increase demand, and increasing demand for electricity could exacerbate environmental impacts. The ultimate goal for environmentalists is an electricity system that is environmentally sustainable in the long term. It is not impossible that some time in the future a magical technology will emerge that has no environmental impacts and is too cheap to meter. In the meantime, since the current system is consuming fossil fuel resources at a prodigious rate and is the major emitter of greenhouse gases and air pollution worldwide, environmentalists prefer action to wishful thinking. The first priority of any good environmentalist is to reduce demand for energy, or at least reduce the rate of increase, by improving end-use efficiency.
Energy efficiency is a winner for both the economy and the environment.
While the environmental benefits the public receives in the form of reduced environ-mental impacts are hard to quantify, the economic benefits are not. An individual customer that reduces demand receives the private benefit of reduced bills. Since the market price at any time is a function of system demand, individual load reductions rendered by saving energy reduce this price, providing monetary benefits to all. However, the load reduction also slightly reduces the market price paid by all buyers. Although the change in price is small, the volume affected by the change is large.