New money for energy efficiency upgrades in public buildings is part of a federal economic recovery plan President-elect Barack Obama plans to pitch to Congress in January, according to an announcement during his weekly radio address on Saturday.

But legislators will likely try to tack some preconditions onto the proposal before states get any federal handouts.

In a speech last Friday at the Northwest Energy Coalition in Portland, Representative Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, said a “significant portion” of the recovery package — on the order of $1 billion to $10 billion a year of a potential $1 trillion proposal — should be funneled directly to the states for energy efficiency projects.

But only states that require utilities to separate, or “decouple,” their revenues and profits from their customers’ energy use should be eligible, said Mr. Blumenauer, a member of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Climate Change.

If some states choose not to enact such standards by the end of 2009, he added, “The money will go to states that do.”

Decoupling is essentially an attempt to divorce a utility’s revenues from the amount of energy it sells, which in turn would increase efficiency. How? Under conventional regulation, customers pay for what they use. If they use less — by installing efficient lighting, say, or unplugging appliances and electronics when not in use — the utility loses money. This arrangement creates a fundamental conflict between a utility’s interest in selling more energy and the public interest in conserving it.

Under a decoupling scheme, customers pay for electricity more or less like they pay for their cable bill: a pre-determined rate every month, even if they never turn on the television. If overall revenues fall below a utility’s fixed costs, the rate is adjusted accordingly across the entire customer base — though some states are establishing rate caps, to protect consumers. The overall result, however, is that a utility’s revenues are no longer tied directly to the amount of energy it sells.

(A primer on decoupling from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy can be found here.)

California was the first state to implement electricity decoupling — in 1982. As a result, its per capita consumption has remained relatively flat, while per person electricity use nationally has grown by 50 percent.

The idea is already catching on in at least 10 other states, including New York and Indiana, where at least one natural gas or electric utility has undergone decoupling, according to the October 2008 state energy efficiency scorecard issued by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.

The promise of a multi-million dollar annual check from Congress could further push some states to mandate decoupling — though not everyone is keen on the idea.

In Oregon, ranked as the second-most energy efficient state on the scorecard, the proposal would likely face some resistance from utilities and regulators — the latter suggesting that such schemes are unfair to consumers.

Pacific Power, an Oregon subsidiary of PacifiCorp and MidAmerican Energy Holdings, opposes mandatory decoupling. The Oregon Public Utility Commission, which regulates the utility industry, has also rejected a past proposal from Portland General Electric, the state’s largest utility, to allow decoupling.

Instead, Oregon law requires utilities to pay 3 percent of gross revenues to the Energy Trust of Oregon, which is responsible for overseeing energy efficiency programs in the state.

Mr. Blumenauer would be “at odds with his own state” if he requires decoupling in return for federal money, said Pat Reiten, the president of Pacific Power.

Portland General Electric has again asked for permission to decouple this year as part of a bid to raise its electricity rates by 9 percent starting Jan. 1. But the company has encountered some resistance from regulatory agency staff members who oppose their request, said P.G.E. spokesman Steve Corson.

The Oregon Public Utility Commission declined to comment on P.G.E.’s proposal, which is under consideration until the end of December.

Commissioners turned down P.G.E.’s 2001 request saying that decoupling would shift too much risk to utility customers, and that charging a set fee was unfair to customers who use less electricity than other rate-payers.