Dan Walters: Economist questions California's energy conservation claims

You just can't trust what governments tell you.

Levinson doesn't question that California's per-capita power use has remained flat, but he concludes that the state's energy conservation rules governing appliances and building construction had relatively little to do with it.

Nearly all of the syndrome, he says, can be attributed to other factors, such as the state's relatively mild climate, the growth of population in Western and Southern states with hot summers and rising energy demands, and the expansion of household size in California.

"Together," Levinson writes, "these trends account for around 90 percent of California's apparent residential electricity savings, thus providing no lessons for other states or countries considering adopting or tightening their energy efficiency standards."