Promoting Less Business

Consolidated Edison is the once imperious power utility that New Yorkers used to call "the company you love to hate." Now it is so beset that even Karl Marx might shed crocodile tears. Crippled by failing machinery, blocked by conservationists in its plans to build allegedly dangerous nuclear power plants, Con Ed can barely meet the city's ever rising power demands.

Last summer the company staged several voltage-cutting "brownouts." Girding for another nervous summer, Con Ed Chairman Charles F. Luce last week rejected the notion that troubled companies need more business. Luce has dropped all Con Ed sales promotion, which had boosted the percentage of new electrically heated housing units in the New York area from 5% to 30%. Con Ed will continue to spend about $1,000,000 a year for advertising--but it will use some of that money to urge New Yorkers to use as little electricity as possible.

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