Why the utilities want us to use more power

Huge increases in electricity prices might be more palatable if we were getting, for our money, a cleaner and more efficient grid that helped us respond effectively to climate change. We're not. We are busily expanding a grid that entrenches electricity generation from fossil fuels and will only accelerate climate change... Less than 1 per cent of that expenditure, says
Chris Dunstan of the Institute for Sustainable Futures, is on demand-side strategies- a combination of energy efficiency, peakload management and distributed power generation
(produced at or near the point of use, like rooftop solar panels).