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The strongest recommendation stemming from the Air Pollution Prevention forum of the Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP) was for tribes to develop and implement energy plans. This article provides a discussion of the benefits of any such plan and itemizes a variety of components of any said plan. A brief discussion of the WRAP is presented within the framework of improving air quality. Based on the background of Jacobs (2000) and Smith (2000), the primary and secondary benefits of energy efficiency plans are then discussed. Then a series of specific recommendations are itemized. These include tribally-sponsored programs, collaborative opportunities, and tribal leadership programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the three cases which show that tribes can clearly benefit from Energy-Efficiency programs. The three tribes participating in this study are diverse in several dimensions and thus face very different energy needs. Members of the research team spent at most one day working with tribal staff, yet in each case it was relatively easy to identify specific projects, and each of the case studies considered yielded a positive net present value. The case studies presented here are project specific and produce modest savings; however, if a full range of projects were implemented on a wide scale by all tribes, the accumulated savings incurred by tribes throughout the United States could be quite significant, on the order of tens of millions of dollars.