A bit earlier today, an important new study by Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology was released. The report is entitled, Southeast Energy Efficiency Study: Energy Efficiency in the South, and it confirms what I’ve been saying for years now: energy efficiency is by far and away the “lowest hanging fruit” of any energy source.  To put it another way, energy efficiency gives us the biggest energy bang for the buck, far more than nuclear power (one of the worst in terms of “bang for the buck”) or “clean coal” (highly speculative and extremely expensive), for example. How much “bang for the buck” we can get from energy efficiency is made clear in this report, including the section specifically on Virginia.

*”The policies analyzed in the report offer the potential to reduce Virginia’s total energy consumption in all three sectors by approximately 7% in 2020 and 12% in 2030.”

*”This avoided consumption is equivalent to about 5 power plants in 2020.”

*”Efficiency policies in Virginia will create jobs, spur significant economic growth and save consumers and businesses billions of dollars” (“38,000 jobs in Virginia in 2030”, “Save more than $3.5 billion in 2020 and $6.3 billion in 2030”).

*”These savings amount to the equivalent of the energy required by about 4,600 Wal-Mart stores and roughly $80,000 in annual energy savings per business in 2020.”

*”These savings amount to the equivalent of the energy required by about 320,000 Virginian households and about $325 in annual energy savings per household in 2020.”

To put it another way, as David Roberts of Grist points out, “for every dollar the South invests in energy efficiency, it will receive an average of $2.25 in benefits over the next 20 years in jobs, economic growth, and lower bills.”  

This is a no-brainer, right? Right. So, why are we wasting our time talking about idiocy like “drill baby drill” when we could be jump-starting an energy efficiency revolution here in Virginia? Let me quote David Roberts again:

Here we return to the single biggest factor in the South’s energy intransigence: the energy companies that dominate it are not participants in a competitive market. Most of the region’s utilities are regulated monopolies, which means their customers and their profits are guaranteed by law. They don’t compete; they manage state regulators, which is a whole different kind of skill. They are involved in cozy, good ol’ boy relationships with those regulators that in some cases stretch back generations. They have their way of doing things and it works for them. Why would they want change?

In particular, regulated monopoly utilities have one way to make more money: build more power plants and sell more power. They convince regulators to offer a set return on capital, and then they deploy the capital to get the return. So all that decreased consumption? All those savings on power bills? All those avoided power plants? That’s all bad news for southern utilities. It translates directly into lost revenue for them.

All of this is exactly why we don’t want Dominion Power writing our state’s energy policy and ruling out a serious push for energy efficiency. This is also exactly why we need to tell Dominion that we’re “decoupling” them, whether they like it or not. The problem is that Dominion’s in the driver’s seat (they profit, we’re screwed), and they spend a ton of money on advertising, lobbyists, and buying our politicians to keep it that way.

What can we do to change this situation? First and foremost, we can demand from our lawmakers, both state and federal, that they implement policies that strongly incentivize energy efficiency and dis-incentivize more dirty power production.  Call Mark Warner. Call Jim Webb. Call your Congressman. Call your state senator and delegate. Let them know that you’ve read this study, that you want its recommendations implemented, and specifically that you want your “$325 in annual energy savings per household.”

I have very little to add to the Washington Post front-page story on Creigh Deeds this morning, except that I’m sorry to hear about his divorce and wish him well. Other than that, I pretty much agree with Miles Grant’s tweet:

Today’s WaPo article on Creigh Deeds is really depressing. Has plenty of time to reinvent himself, but is he interested?

Thoughts? Feel free to use this as an open thread to discuss Creigh Deeds, the 2009 gubernatorial race (in retrospect, now that some time has gone by), the future of the Democratic Party of Virginia, etc.

For several years now, I’ve relied on Sitemeter as a reliable, “apples to apples” metric for blog traffic statistics. Aside from its reliability (it’s worth noting that Sitemeter stats are highly comparable to Google Analytics stats) another advantage to Sitemeter is that it’s commonly used by major political blogs like Daily Kos, Open Left, MyDD, etc.

If every blog used Sitemeter and made their statistics available, we’d be in great shape on this front. Unfortunately, not all blogs – for whatever reason – make their Sitemeter stats publicly available. This leads people to use seriously flawed, proxy-type metrics like Alexa’s “incoming links”-based rankings. The problem with “incoming links” is that they often have little (if any) correlation to actual traffic.  Comparing Sitemeter and Google Analytics to Alexa, for instance, leads to all kinds of weird, counterintuitive, or completely nonsensical results. For that reason, I don’t use Alexa at all.

Anyway, in my continual search for “apples-to-apples”, reliable traffic statistics across blogs, the other day, I stumbled across Compete.com, “a web traffic analysis service operating in the United States that publishes the approximate number of global visitors to the top 1,000,000 web sites in the world.”  Compete.com purports to compute its traffic stats “by sending the URLs that users visit to Compete.com. Compete.com then sends back the trust scores and internet ranks from its database to the users.” I found this intriguing, so I decided to see what results it produced for Virginia political blogs and compare, where available, to public Sitemeter stats.  See after the “flip” for a listing of key results (note: all the statistics are from February 2010).

UPDATE: Too Conservative provided with me with their traffic statistics for February 2010 — 20,954 visits according to Google Analytics, which  would rank that blog slightly ahead of Bearing Drift (using Sitemeter, which tends to be fairly comparable to Google Analytics).

*For whatever reason, a few Virginia political blogs have no public stats in either Sitemeter OR Compete.com. These include Waldo Jaquith and Vivian Paige. Thus, the discussion below does not include those blogs.

*No matter how you look at it, Not Larry Sabato is the leading Virginia political blog, 51,222 visits (in February 2010) according to Sitemeter, and 37,045 visits according to Compete.com.

*According to Sitemeter, Blue Virginia was the second largest Virginia political blog in terms of traffic (35,656 visits) in February 2010.  According to Compete.com, however, Blue Virginia was #4 (with 22,941 visits), behind Bearing Drift and Below the Beltway.

*In February 2010, Bearing Drift was the third-largest Virginia political blog, according to Sitemeter (with 18,904 visits), and the second-largest according to Compete.com (24,728 visits).

*According to Compete.com, Below the Beltway was the second-largest Virginia political blog in February 2010, with 24,023 visits. Sitemeter stats are not publicly available for this blog.

*The biggest disparity between Compete.com and Sitemeter for Virginia political blogs was, by far and away, for BVBL. I have no idea why this is the case, but Sitemeter says that BVBL received 18,075 visits in February 2010, while Compete.com says it only received 1,267 visits. In this case, I would strongly suggest that Compete.com is out to lunch, and that Sitemeter is far more accurate. To be blunt, there’s no way in hell that BVBL only received 1,267 visits in February 2010.

*Other than NLS, Blue Virginia, Below the Beltway, Bearing Drift and BVBL (“B” names seem very popular in Virginia for whatever reason), the only other Virginia political blog (again, not counting Waldo Jaquith and Vivian Paige, because I can’t find any stats for them on either Compete.com or Sitemeter) that received more than 10,000 visits in February 2010 was Virginia Virtucon (14,052 visits).

*According to Compete.com, SWAC Girl received 6,142 visits in February 2010; VB Dems got 5,664 visits; Tertium Quids 4,878 visits; Crystal Clear Conservative 4,013 visits; Virginia Tea Party Patriots 3,798 visits; Too Conservative 3,567 visits (note: this seems way too low based on the # of comments over there, but they don’t have public statistics so it’s impossible to know for sure; note #2 — see update above); VA Right 3,508 visits; NOVA Town Hall 2,626 visits; Shaun Kenney 2,388 visits; Blue Commonwealth 1,235 visits; Ox Road South 824 visits; and Republitarian 44 visits. Also, according to Sitemeter, The Richmonder received 946 visits in February 2010.

*One other interesting, albeit weird, result from Compete.com is that Blue Virginia receives a higher (note: a “lower” number equates to a “higher” ranking) ranking (#170,977) than Bearing Drift (#285,641) and Below the Beltway (#259,990). I’m not sure how to explain this, although it is more in line with Sitemeter traffic stats, which have Blue Virginia at nearly double the traffic of Bearing Drift.

Thanks to Tom Whipple for the Monday “Clips.”

1. MCDONNELL’S BUDGET FIXES THROUGH 2012 COMING DUE

3. MISSISSIPPI GOV. BARBOUR DEFENDS MCDONNELL’S CONFEDERATE PROCLAMATION

6. DEMOCRATS CALL ON MCDONNELL TO BACK OFF CHANGES IN FELON VOTING RIGHTS RESTORATION

9. AFTER LOSS, VA.’S DEEDS TRIES TO REGAIN HIS FOOTING

10. VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS FEEL THE HEAT IN TOUGH ELECTION YEAR

11. PERRIELLO EARMARKS WOULD HELP 41 DISTRICT PROJECTS

12. SCOTT LAUDED FOR HELPING PASS HEALTH CARE REFORM

13. CHANGING FACES IN CONGRESSIONAL RACES

16. CONSTRUCTION OF STATE’S FIRST WIND FARM TO RESUME THIS MONTH IN HIGHLAND

18. DMV TRIES TO PUT THE BRAKES ON RACY LICENSE PLATES

20. CHESAPEAKE BAY IS BETTER, BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH

29. DRIVERS SAY WASHINGTON REGION’S TRAFFIC HAS GONE FROM BAD TO WORSE