Home builders will be able to guarantee heating and cooling bills as a way of marketing new high-efficiency homes to home buyers under a program approved Tuesday by the N.C. Utilities Commission.

The program pushes new efficiency boundaries by enticing customers with guaranteed savings as opposed to a mere promise. As part of the guarantee, customers who get utility bills that exceed the guarantee will qualify for reimbursements.

Under the program, Progress Energy will pay the home builders up to $4,000 per home for meeting the strictest efficiency standards. Qualifying homes will have to be significantly more efficient than homes with the federal Energy Star rating.

It's not clear when Raleigh-based Progress will begin offering the program to home builders, and when the builders will begin offering billing guarantees to their customers.

Progress Energy wants to pay flower shops, pizzerias and other small businesses up to 80 percent of the cost of installing energy-efficient equipment.

Raleigh-based Progress proposed the energy-efficiency program to the N.C. Utilities Commission on Friday and hopes to have the program approved this year. If approved, the program would cover several thousand dollars in costs per business for upgrades to lighting, refrigeration, and heating and cooling.

Progress is seeking approval of the program to meet its state-imposed mandate to promote renewable energy and efficiency programs. The company would be able to recover the costs of the program, including lost energy sales, from all customers through rate increases.

Meeting energy demand through energy efficiency programs is generally considered to be cheaper that building power plants to produce an equivalent amount of energy.

Amory Lovins, a Harvard and Oxford-educated physicist regarded by some as a prophet of energy efficiency, will speak tomorrow about energy-saving frontiers at N.C. State University in Raleigh.

Lovins was one of the first to advocate for incentivizing industries and utilities to use less energy by paying them for achieving savings. The idea was dismissed at first but has since been adopted by many states, including North Carolina in its 2007 energy law requiring power companies to increase their reliance on renewable resources and energy efficiency.

Lovins is the co-founder, with his wife, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the winner of numerous awards and prizes, including the 1993 MacArthur Fellow, commonly known as the "genius grant." The author of 31 books and more than 450 papers, he was listed as one of the most influential figures in business in the centennial issue of The Wall Street Journal and named as one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine.
 

PowerSecure International, the Wake Forest utility services company that has doubled in size in recent years, reported record sales for the fourth quarter and the full year.

The company reported strong gains in all three business line, which are represented by offices in North Raleigh, Morrisville as well as Wake Forest.

PowerSecure had a "transformational" year, CEO Sidney Hinton said in a release. The 536-employee company said earlier this year it plans to add 100 jobs this year.

"Our business reached a new level of maturity and scale," Hinton said in the release.
 

Progress Energy customers in this state can expect a moderate rate increase later this year, based on the electric utility's rate request in neighboring South Carolina.

Raleigh-based Progress today asked South Carolina regulators to raise the typical residential bill by about $5. The company is recovering fuel costs (mostly coal) and the cost of solar projects, other renewables and energy efficiency programs.

Progress will likely make a similar filing in North Carolina next month, after two consecutive years of rate cuts that reflected falling energy costs in the wake of the recession. If approved by the N.C. Utilities Commission, the increase would be effective Dec. 1.

Barely three years have passed since the state overhauled its energy policy to require electric utilities to meet energy demand through renewable resources and energy efficiency programs.

Now a legislative proposal introduced Wednesday would scrap the 2007 energy law, known as Senate Bill 3, or SB3. Republican state Rep. George Cleveland's bill calls for the immediate repeal of Senate Bill 3, which requires power companies to meet 12.5 percent of customer electricity demand through renewables and conservation by 2021.

Cleveland, a retired U.S. Marine who represents Onslow County, could not be reached for comment this week.

But the idea originates from the conservative John Locke Foundation. The Raleigh nonprofit says SB3 artificially drives up electricity prices and panders to environmental extremists.

The state's 2007 energy law is a work in progress that requires resolving a number of thorny issues, such as whether chipped whole trees qualify as a renewable fuel source.

The state legislature three years ago required power companies to increase their reliance on alternative fuels, clean energy and energy conservation to meet customer demand. North Carolina became the first state in the Southeast to pass a renewable energy portfolio standard.

Under the law, power companies in the state buy electricity and renewable credit from small independent generators that use the sun, wood, animal waste and garbage as fuel.

The N.C. Utilities Commission, which enforces and monitors the state energy law, has already approved a renewable energy facility in Wake County that generates electricity from ethanol that's derived from organic waste.

The commission has also approved a renewable facility that has converted a pair of coal-burning power plants to burn a cleaner blend of coal mixed with wood waste and automobile tires. The portion of electricity that comes form rubber and organic material qualifies as biomass and can be used to toward the renewable energy mandate.

But the subject is so complicated that utilities commission has has to open more than a dozen case dockets to clear up misunderstandings and define disputed terms.