Washington Post: Last year, as gas prices broke $4 a gallon and the U.S. economy put a wheel in the ditch, the Washington region did something improbable. It became slightly friendlier toward the climate. Slightly. A new Washington Post analysis shows that local homes and businesses used about 2 percent less electricity in the first nine months of 2008 than they did in 2007. That’s a small drop, but for Washington, any drop is significant: Electric power is the region’s largest single …