You know, if I were a local reporter on the energy beat, I’d think it’d be very interesting to study how last week’s snow days affected our community’s energy usage. Did a near-week of school days cause our area to use more or less electricity and/or natural gas? Did our local businesses burn energy to heat and light mostly-empty offices during this time? What about the gasoline saved from all the school buses that weren’t running? Or the commutes that didn’t take place? How about the fleet of municipal utility trucks that constantly worked to clear our roads?
Unlike hurricanes and ice storms, last week’s snow caused relatively little damage to our electricity infrastructure. I think this makes an ideal situation to study because one can essentially rule out downed power lines as the cause of energy savings (if any). I’d love to see a breakdown of the energy costs of this recent break.