Electric utilities marketed heat by betting on future atomic cheapness.

Evidence

To build the market for electric heat, power companies also used promotional rates, although the practice was not universal. For a time, indeed, the industry debated the best way to approach the question of cost. According to a number of utility executives, the advertisements for electric heat should downplay the issue of economy and instead follow a “Cadillac” approach to marketing: Electric heat simply was better and customers should be willing to pay a premium for higher quality. But a majority in the industry took a different view. Though electric heat was more expensive than gas or oil, the situation would soon be reversed, and electric utilities should sell the future: With the coming of atomic energy, electricity would be incredibly cheap. In the meantime, because the higher cost of electric heat was the principal obstacle to higher sales, the industry had to sell Cadillacs at Pontiac prices. By the early 1960s, accordingly, almost 100 of the nation’s utilities offered special rates for electric heat. The most common approach was to charge residential customers differently for different levels of demand. Below one hundred and fifty kilowatt hours a month, more or less – enough electricity to power lights and small appliances – the highest rate applied. The rate went down for the next step of demand, to reward customers with a few big-ticket appliances. Finally, for monthly use above three or four hundred kilowatt hours – a level only homes with electric heat would reach – the rates were rock-bottom. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 272

Categorization

• XREF: Inverted promotional rate structures directly parallel tiered telecom/data pricing debates and connect to how infrastructure economics shaped consumption. — connects to: Nuclear power outcompeted solar because of military and profit advantages — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 227; Electric heat wasted energy despite perfect in-home efficiency. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 283; Air conditioning’s summer demand drove utilities to promote electric heat — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 265 (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle: how industry marketing deliberately inverted the logic of scale to reward the heaviest users—a structural tax on small users.

Broader Connections

• Builders, not consumers, chose energy-wasteful electric heat for profit reasons #complicates (0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 290