Feds Fine Durham Energy Efficiency Co $722M

This is such a bizarre setup.

> American Efficient then used that sales data to calculate the energy savings from the anticipated use of the lighting and appliances, entering those projected savings into “capacity auctions.”

> At capacity auctions, grid operators pay for the ability of traditional power suppliers and utilities— as well as energy-efficiency aggregators like American Efficient—to produce power when needed.

The home depot example shows it more succinctly. How does American Efficient sending a small check to home depot mean that they get to bid for having produced capacity?

If I squint I can almost imagine the goal of this setup. If you want people to use less power you could definitely promote energy efficient appliances and lighting via market forces.

But doing so at capacity auctions seems ridiculous. If your power company wants it then they should cut checks directly to the consumer as a discount/subsidy on energy efficient appliances.

I can't help but feel that this article is burying the lede. According to FERC, Home Depot sold 'Environmental Attributes' to America Efficient, not mere sales data. 'Environmental Attributes' are intrinsic to the energy saving device, and it should not be possible to sell them separately without a contract with the consumers. Therefore, Home Depot themselves would appear to be heavily implicated - but the possibility is not discussed.

The energy savings were sold by HD twice - once to the customer (who pays a premium for less energy usage, and may also have claimed federal tax credits), and once more to America Efficient (who sold them to the state / grid operator non-profits).

It's an interesting kind of subsidy arbitrage - since businesses can benefit from subsidies that consumers cannot, it creates an incentive to carve out the subsidy-granting-essence from consumers sales and sell them on in aggregate.

This is a wild story about creating a business that buys and sells not using electricity. I jokingly suggested you could build an 'energy consumption facility' which was just a big resistor connected to ground (which is all an unprofitable bitcoin mining rig is) and then get paid for not using it.

The original source for this was Matt Levine over at Bloomberg. His take is also quite good: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-04-30/sel...

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