 In the face of the environmental and cost challenges
confronting the electric utility industry, WPPI, its member communities and their retail customers have a shared
responsibility to ensure that our communities maintain an affordable, highly reliable and environmentally responsible
power supply. This is our imperative — today and for the long term.
Affordable and reliable electricity is essential to the health, safety,
quality of life and economic vitality of our communities. The electric utility industry is facing major cost increases due to rising
fuel prices, rapidly escalating construction and equipment costs for new generating plants, and more stringent environmental regulations.
These increases can only be mitigated through a concerted effort by both utilities and their customers to control costs.
There are other critical issues at stake. We must join together to help
our country achieve energy independence, as a matter of national security. We must do our part to address the serious concerns raised
by climate change by substantially lessening our reliance on fossil fuels.
While many different strategies will be needed, WPPI believes that
dramatically reducing energy waste and increasing investments in research and development of new technologies are essential.
From the beginning, WPPI has approached its power supply responsibility
with a long-term perspective. To address the challenges that face us in the next decade, we must sustain that focus and make investments
today that will strengthen our communities in the future. It is up to all of us — WPPI, its members and their customers — to protect
the environment and secure our energy future for our children's children.
To meet this shared responsibility, it is WPPI's obligation to make smart
decisions on new power supply resources that serve the electricity needs of our communities. In doing so, we must advance cleaner, more
efficient generation technologies; lessen reliance on older, less efficient and less clean power plants; significantly ramp up our
commitment to renewable energy resources; and dramatically increase delivery of cost-effective energy conservation and efficiency
programs. These initiatives will enable customers to keep bills down even as rates rise, without sacrificing convenience or productivity.
To be truly effective, WPPI also must lead by example,
making sure that WPPI is a model of efficiency in its own use of electricity.
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Our members, in turn, must employ their expertise to lead their
communities in the development of local renewable resources and the efficient use of electricity. The excellent customer service
these member utilities consistently provide will take new and innovative forms. WPPI members will lead by example, partnering with
their local school systems to lower costs, while educating our children about energy resources, efficiency and related
environmental issues. Member utilities also will provide hands-on assistance to both residential and business customers to help
them lower their bills.
In 2006, WPPI members took a giant step forward in meeting this
responsibility by unanimously approving a substantial increase in WPPI's conservation and efficiency budget over at least the
next three years. Members also committed to putting WPPI on a path that should result in meeting the state's 2015 mandatory
renewable portfolio standard six years early, in 2009.
Finally, it is essential that retail customers — the consumers of
electricity — join with us, by sharing the responsibility to use energy much more wisely than in the past. To keep electric costs
down over the long term and protect our environment for future generations, customers must become more efficient and better
informed. The Environmental Protection Agency has calculated that if every American homeowner replaced just one incandescent light
bulb with an ENERGY STARŪ compact fluorescent light bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a
year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.
This statistic is both startling and encouraging. It demonstrates
the substantial impact even the simplest energy efficiency and conservation measures can have on long-term power costs and the
health of our environment. We can each do much more than replace a single bulb! But we need to do it together.
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