Energy efficiency has become a catch phrase in recent years thanks to higher fuel prices and pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But turning words into deeds hasn't been a high priority in Missouri, where electric rates are among the lowest in the nation.

That has started to change during the past year with the adoption of new state laws and regulations, utility programs and federal stimulus spending aimed at helping homeowners and businesses consume less energy.

Pat Justis, who worked for 14 years at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, joined AmerenUE this summer to manage the utility's business efficiency program.

In February, St. Louis-based AmerenUE began offering $24 million in incentives to Missouri business customers under a three-year energy efficiency program.

AmerenUE makes money selling electricity. Why would a utility want to help its customers use less energy? Isn't that counter-intuitive?

In the short run, it's definitely not intuitive. However, with a big utility like ours, we do long-term planning. About every three years we do an integrated resource plan. That plan needs to include information about how are you going to meet the load (demand) that your customers have.

Customers have a certain amount of energy they need us to provide. How are we going to provide that? So we look at the various possibilities and sources. Energy efficiency is a largely untapped resource for us out there and it's a low-cost resource for us.

Can you provide a couple of tangible examples of efficiency projects that AmerenUE has helped to fund through this program?

One recent project was the Children's Hospital parking garage. We provided incentives to help them retrofit the existing lighting to a more efficient lighting type. We went from a metal halo light to a fluorescent fixture. They will save more than million kilowatt-hours per year.

Often, it takes an up-front investment to save money in the long run. To what extent has this been a barrier, especially for smaller businesses, especially during a weak economy?

It's always been a barrier for businesses and homeowners. However, energy efficiency is a great investment because it's well understood what type of savings you can get from doing specific measures.



Missouri ranked 41st among states in a recent study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. To what extent are the relatively low electric rates a reason there's historically been tepid interest in energy efficiency programs?

Oftentimes the biggest hurdle is, what is the payback on doing energy efficiency projects. With low rates, they tend to have long payback periods. But again, energy efficiency is a great investment in that you can still get good pay backs.

There're a lot of good projects out there that have a three-year payback and it's a wise investment because you know what the savings will be.

You began by offering $24 million in incentives in February. Your website indicates that as of Oct. 22, more than $23 million of that remained available for projects completed by September 2011. Do you expect to see that ramp up over the next year?

I do. I expect it to ramp up significantly, and we'll do a lot of catching up in the second year.

But note that while we call it a business energy efficiency program, it's really a long-term initiative for the company. We view energy efficiency as a resource to help meet our customers' energy needs and keep rates down.

As long as we see more projects coming in and growth in that pipeline of projects, then that's a good thing. That's what we want to head toward. So yes, we have a lot of money left, but that money is budgeted for a certain amount of time, a three-year period, and I expect we'll be able to use that up.

But the program doesn't end in three years. In the pipeline, we already have twice as many projects committed than we have completed so far. We're definitely seeing an up curve.