Barak Obama's and John McCain's energy plans suffer from the same old failed policies. They pay too much attention to traditional energy companies, just throw money at the problem, and totally ignore what consumers can do. We offer street smart recommendations that the future new President should consider or at least explain why he won't.

People Power- the real reason that energy prices are lower
The price of oil and gasoline have slowly declined and so has the price of natural gas and electricity prices.

If you're wondering what drove these prices down, don't look to the Congress or the current administration. They did virtually nothing.

You only have yourself and millions of your fellow Americans to applaud. The fact is those high prices changed your behavior and energy consumption habits. Then the Law of Suppy and Demand kicked in when demand for oil and gasoline declined.

How did you do it? Here's what I think:

1. You abandoned your cars and used more public transportation,
2. You car pooled to work or during non-working hours,
3. You worked at home a couple of days a week and avoided all that traffic,
4. You bought more hybrid cars and trucks that get high miles per gallon (mpg),
5. You traded in or sold your gas guzzling car or truck,
6. You tuned up your car and inflated the tires (maybe not),
7. You didn't go over the speed limit of 65 mph on many highways,
8. You didn't run your vehicle's air conditioner on some days,
9. You avoided coming into the city during rush hour, and
10. You stayed close to home on your family vacation.

I'm sure we've overlooked something so please feel free to comment and let us know what you did.

How to Jumpstart the Obama and McCain Energy Plans
Both energy plans need to include us as a part of solution and quit relying on traditional energy companies and technology alone to solve our energy problem. Of course, conservation or the programs discussed below won't completely solve the problem, but in a world and country that relies on market forces, we can definitely affect that demand curve and influence prices. 

I can't figure out why the Obama and McCain energy plans totally ignored the role that consumers (we) played in reducing gasoline and oil prices. This is certainly a part of "elephants in the room article" or over relying on traditional sources of energy. I can understand why the Obama Energy Plan may be predisposed to do this. The Democrats may think this is a job that is too big for you and I and that only government can solve the problem. That is nonsense.

McCain's Energy Plan at least mentioned energy efficiency, but it also failed to mention demand response and advanced metering programs that residential and small business customers could use to control their electricity costs and reduce the demand for energy.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal on Smart Meters really supports the notion that consumers will reduce their electricity consumption when they know what it is costing them. We believe that the Obama and McCain energy plans should require electric utilities to develop demand response and smart metering programs. The benefits are obvious.
Consumers will:

• Reduce consumption and earn a credit for doing so at critical times of the year,
• Reduce stress on the electric grid
• Avoid the cost of building power plants that onoy operate less than one week of the year, and
• Reduce green house emissions.

As we discussed in previous energy articles, we can also install solar and wind energy on our homes, factories and commercial buildings.

Our next two articles will deal with the Obama and McCain Energy plans. They will come out this week.