A JEA plan to get customers to save energy won’t meet some state conservation goals but it’s good enough, says a state agency.

Florida’s Public Service Commission approved the Jacksonville-owned utility’s 10-year plan last week. The agency requires utilities to finance programs that help consumers use less energy, and it rejected plans from three privately owned utilities.

Staff at the commission said JEA’s commercial customers would save less power than the state wanted between 2015 and 2019, but savings before then would make up the difference.

A conservation advocate said JEA could do a lot more to help customers save power.

“They certainly could be doing three, four, five times more,” said Tom Larson, Florida energy policy manager for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

He said the forecasts for the second half of the decade shouldn’t be taken too literally, because the service commission will require a new efficiency plan in 2015 anyway.

JEA programs do things such as subsidize sales of compact fluorescent light bulbs and offer incentives for making new houses energy-efficient.

The utility budgeted $9.6 million in the coming year for energy saving efforts, which its industry calls demand-side management.

By 2019, JEA expects its programs will curb rising power demands by about 1.1 percent.

But Larson pointed out that the average power savings predicted among Florida’s seven biggest utilities is 3.4 percent.

“One-point-one percent over 10 years is lame,” said Larson, whose nonprofit employer campaigned in the past year for the state to set tougher conservation goals for utilities.

JEA and the Orlando Utilities Commission, both taxpayer-owned, argued before the commission last year that they shouldn’t have to promise the state any specific savings rate.

The utilities said those rules were meant for privately owned companies, and applying them to taxpayer-owned utilities was like one level of government regulating another.

Local leaders know best how to balance energy savings against more costs on customers’ bills, said Richard Vento, who runs JEA’s energy-savings programs, formally called demand-side management.

He said the utility was pleased state officials didn’t insist on a specific savings rate, accepting instead a pledge to continue programs the utility was already running.

“If JEA chooses to pursue higher levels of reinvestment into the community, that’s at the direction of our board of directors, and that’s what we wanted preserved,” Vento said.

Larson said JEA has done a good job finding cheap ways to encourage efficiency, so customers aren’t being charged a lot more for consuming less.

“Compliments to JEA,” Larson said. “But I would say: do more.”

steve.patterson@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4263