Under their crusty conservative exteriors, are Colorado Springs residents really a bunch of tree-hugging hippies? Maybe.

When it comes to wearing green on its sleeve, Colorado Springs is no Boulder or Denver. But when it comes to nuts-and-bolts conservation — using less electricity, natural gas and water — Colorado Springs starts to take on a distinctly emerald hue.

Based on available data, the average Colorado Springs household uses less electricity, less water and less gas than the average household in Denver or the nation as a whole.

The differences can be pretty stark: A typical household in the Springs uses 98,640 gallons of water a year, according to Colorado Springs Utilities statistics. For Denver Water’s customers (which includes the city of Denver and several surrounding suburbs), the average is 125,000 gallons a year. Nationally, it’s 127,400 gallons.

What’s going on here? Richard Skorman, a former city councilman and founder of the Colorado Springs Conservation Corps, said it’s not as surprising as some might think.

“I have a theory that we are closet environmentalists in the community,” he said. “Not the old-fashioned kind, but that people here like to live within their means — they don’t like government to overspend and they don’t like to waste themselves.”

The pattern is easiest to see with water. After the drought at the turn of the millennium, most Coloradans cut way back on water usage. In Colorado Springs, people managed to keep consumption low even once the rain returned, said Steve Berry, spokesman for Colorado Springs Utilities.

“Our per capita water usage is actually below what it was during the drought,” he said.

Indeed, the Springs has the lowest average water consumption of any of the big cities in the Front Range, Skorman said.

The picture is a little murkier with electricity and natural gas. The Springs’ averages for both are slightly lower than state averages (and electricity consumption for both is far below the national average), but it’s hard to pinpoint a cause. Certainly, Utilities offers rebates for energy efficient appliances, but so does Xcel Energy in Denver. The climate here may be a little more congenial, Berry speculated, requiring less heat in winter and less air conditioning in summer than our northern neighbors. Dan Hodges, executive director of the Colorado Association of Municipal Utilities, said factors like demographics and average house age can make it difficult to compare one city to another.

“There’s a lot of variables in play there,” he said. “The why’s behind the numbers aren’t as simple as, ‘This utility has this program and that one has that program.’”

But the Springs is doing OK on consumption. The community could still, however, do better, some say.“I think people want to do the right thing, they really do,” Skorman said.

If every homeowner replaced a porch light with a compact fluorescent bulb and installed a furnace whistle (which whistles when a furnace filter becomes clogged and reminds the homeowner to change it), it could produce a huge return in energy and money.

“A $3 to $4 investment could save people hundreds of dollars a year,” Skorman said.

Vast amounts of power (and money) could be saved if people simply turned off their appliances with a power strip, eliminating “vampire loads” of TVs and cable boxes and battery chargers and many more modern appliances that continue to suck energy even when they’re turned “off,” said Curtis Mitchell, conservation and supply manager for Fountain Utilities.

“It’s become increasingly challenging given the types of appliances we use and the new televisions we have,” Mitchell said.

Despite the increasing number of electronics and the number of homes with air conditioning, electric consumption in Fountain is actually declining, while in the Springs it’s holding steady. That’s a sign that people are aware of their consumption and making changes, Berry said. To help continue that trend, Utilities is working on a pilot program that allows consumers to monitor their energy usage online, Berry said.

Skorman would love to see Utilities or another government agency underwrite efficiency upgrades for homeowners, using the long-term cost savings to offset the improvements’ high initial cost. But for now, he said, he’d settle for a few furnace whistles.

“The best way is for people to start to make small changes,” he said. “If enough of us do it, it will start to make a big difference.”

—Call the writer at 636-0275

Photo by Gazette file

MARK REIS