Dive Brief:

• Ameren Missouri has filed a six-year, $550 million energy efficiency proposal with state regulators, expanding on previous efforts and offering more than a dozen new programs.
• If approved, it would be the largest energy efficiency program in the state's history, Ameren said. The program would run 2019-2024.
• Ameren's proposal includes annual expenditures of almost $92 million, with a goal of saving 2 billion kWh. It is a far cry from the utility's 2012 plan, when it slashed funding to $10 million during a bridge year between efficiency programs.

Dive Insight:

Past programs approved under the Missouri Energy Efficiency Investment Act (MEEIA) ran about half as long as Ameren is now proposing. But for a variety of reasons, the utility is pressing regulators to allow the six-year program.

"The 6-year term is important to enable the Company to achieve deeper energy savings made possible by longer-term relationships with customers," Ameren said in its application. Additionally, capacity needs have been pushed further into the future than had been anticipated when the company's last MEEIA filing was made.

The longer implementation will allow it to "more effectively defer future long-term supply-side and delivery resource needs," Ameren said. The utility has a goal of reducing carbon emissions 80% by 2050.

"By expanding the program to six years, we're able to include a wider range of options, including 15 new programs," Bill Davis, Ameren MIssouri's director of energy efficiency and renewables, said in a statement. In total, Ameren is proposing a $551 million budget, with $50 million directed towards the low-income sector.

The proposal includes new demand response programs for residential and commercial customers. The residential program would use smart thermostats to reduce peak demand with a goal of enrolling more than 140,000 customers by the end of 2024. The residential program will use an administrator while the business demand response program will retain an aggregator to recruit and pay incentives to business customers.

Ameren says its "recent history with implementation of large-scale customer energy efficiency programs began in earnest in 2009 when MEEIA was passed into law."

From 2013 through 2017, the utility says its programs achieved net savings of 2,078,929 MWh.

Ameren made deep cuts to its efficiency budget in 2012, before rolling out the first MEEIA plan.