Energy reform could save Tennessee billions, add jobs

Tennessee could save billions of dollars and generate thousands of new jobs by enacting aggressive energy efficiency policies, a team of researchers from Georgia Tech and Duke University say.

Their study, Energy Efficiency in the South, argues that by reducing the growth of electricity consumption, Tennesseans could save $1.6 billion a year by 2020, and $3.1 billion a year by 2030. Those savings, pumped into other industries such as green manufacturing, would in turn generate 15,100 jobs by 2020 and 20,700 jobs by 2030, the researchers said. The report also churns out numbers for other southern states.

“An aggressive commitment to energy efficiency could be an economic windfall for the South,” said Marilyn Brown of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who was co-lead researcher of the study. “Such a shift would lower energy bills for cash-strapped consumers and businesses and create more new jobs for Southern workers.”

Brown was recently appointed to the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority by President Barack Obama, though she has not yet been confirmed. She was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on an intergovernmental panel that proposed ways to mitigate climate change.

Read the full story in the Nashville Business Journal. The Charlotte Business Journal provides a North Carolina perspective on the report.