Power companies have historically made more money by selling more power. But increasingly there's a move to do the reverse: some states are now rewarding their local power companies for getting people to use less energy. The Baltimore Sun reports that Maryland is now the fourth state to set it up so that power companies actually make more when their customers reduce their energy consumption. Clark believes there's a real need to do this in all 50 states. However, California, Idaho and New York are the only other states that have done anything about it so far. California has come a long way when you look at its power companies. Earlier this decade, power companies in the Golden State conspired to cheat customers by creating a false shortage of power and driving up the prices. So individuals and businesses there started fighting the rising costs by conserving. To this day, Californians still use far less power per person than the rest of us. But as a whole, Americans use six to seven times more energy per person than the citizens of other developed countries. Sometimes we are not always capable of seeing what the return on investment will be for practicing energy conservation. So Clark wonders if there should be monetary incentives to get homeowners to reduce household energy consumption.