This week in buildings, land and industry decarbonization news, NetZero Insider’s K Kaufmann recently attended a summit hosted by the Alliance to Save Energy where the need for demand-side management programs of all stripes to limit the cost impacts of electrification was discussed. 

The New York Times has the details on a recent California PUC vote that assigned a fixed cost to most residents’ monthly utility bills while cutting their kilowatt-hour rates. The move is meant to help electrification efforts, which many in the state have argued are hampered by high prices for electricity. But advocates for distributed generation argue the fixed charge will punish those who have solar and storage, and thus tax the grid less, while rewarding the biggest users of power from the grid. 

In Connecticut, the state is reaching out to residents to help it design programs funded by $100 million from the Inflation Reduction Act aimed at improving efficiency and increasing electrification for homeowners. The Hartford Courant has the details. 

Data center load growth has been a major story in the United States, and it is also being felt across the pond, with the European Union considering new regulations setting minimum efficiency rules for energy and water use in the sector. CIO.com has a story on the effort, which starts with reporting of their energy use by this September. 

GreenBiz has a story on Microsoft’s efforts to curtail a recent rise in emissions that its data center expansions have led to. The member of the stock market’s “Magnificent Seven” is looking beyond electricity supply and wants to get all the concrete, steel and computer equipment needed for data center expansion to have less of a carbon impact. 

While there is still plenty of work left to electrify end-use energy, CleanTechnica ran a story about how much consumers have moved away from burning fossil fuels at home and toward electricity already. In the past 50 years, according to EIA data, the use of fuel oil has fallen 89%, propane 55% and even natural gas by 38%, while homes use 89% more electricity. 

Read all that more in this week’s Intelligence Report: