Rethinking a federal renewable electricity standard
Some 36 states require their electric utilities to obtain increasingly larger shares of power from renewable and efficient resources, yet a national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) floundered recently in the United States Senate because of opposition from utilities and southeastern lawmakers who felt their region does not have sufficient solar and wind resources to meet a 15 percent requirement by 2020. Since such opposition will be hard to overcome in 2008, should RES advocates reconsider their strategy?
The RES’s very purpose is a point of contention. Some, including the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, believe the measure simply should advance specific renewable-energy technologies — solar, wind, and biomass — and the industries that promote them. Others, such as the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, argue that an RES should be a tool within the larger effort of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, an initiative to obtain greater shares of electricity from fuels emitting no carbon.
Renewable industry and environmental lobbyists also have disparate opinions. Solar businesses desperately want a portfolio standard that focuses just on renewable resources, while wind firms favor an RES but prefer continuation of a generous tax credit for their turbines. Most of the major conservation groups want to limit the Renewable Electricity Standard to solar, wind, and some biomass, yet several environmentalists argue that efficient technologies, such as energy recycling and combined heat and power, offer the fastest and cheapest means to reduce the emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases.
Political judgments also differ. Some solar advocates want to reintroduce the same measure that failed in the Senate, arguing they now have the 60 votes needed to obtain closure and stop a filibuster. Yet others, pointing to continued opposition from Republicans, the Bush White House, and southeastern Democrats, argue the current form will not pass. Some environmentalists, worried that any federal standard get watered down during 2008 congressional negotiations, prefer lobbying for additional state actions until more sympathetic policymakers are elected to the White House and Congress.
The original legislative proposal called for distribution utilities across the country to obtain 20 percent of their electricity from solar, wind, and biomass by the year 2020. Yet renewable energy advocates failed to count votes effectively as it became clear in August 2007 that a 20-percent provision would not pass the U.S. House of Representatives. They didn’t even have sufficient support for a 15-percent provision. That’s when efficiency advocates — who previously were rebuffed by renewable-energy lobbyists — promised to deliver the needed votes if the Renewable Electricity Standard was opened a bit to include combined heat and power and waste-energy recovery. The final House bill declared that such efficient technologies will provide 27 percent of the standard — or 4 percent of the U.S. total — by the year 2020.
Some Senate Republicans — most notably Sen. Pete Domenici (NM), ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee — want the standard opened further to include all energy sources that generate electricity without releasing greenhouse gases. A strong nuclear proponent, Domenici argues that reactors don’t emit such air pollutants (although he ignores their long-term radioactive wastes). Rep. Rick Boucher, chairman of the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, hails from Virginia’s coal belt and also wants to include coal-fired power plants that capture and sequester carbon emissions.
Most environmental lobbyists remain deeply skeptical of nuclear and coal projects and maintain that the Domenici and Boucher proposals would only further subsidize dirty coal and dangerous nuclear power. Yet rather than oppose Republican and coal-state Democrats outright, clean energy advocates could accept their proposals and build an effective political coalition, knowing that neither coal nor nuclear power can soon deliver carbon-free power.
Imagine that a Clean Energy Portfolio Standard (CEPS) would require distribution utilities to obtain a higher percentage — say 40 or 50 percent — of their electricity from any carbon-free source by 2020. If the definition of such clean energy is strict, neither nuclear power nor coal would qualify. In the case of the nuclear fuel cycle, for instance, virtually the entire uranium enrichment process is powered by coal-fired plants in the Tennessee Valley that emit tons of carbon dioxide. No doubt nuclear proponents would try to argue that only the Tennessee Valley Authority’s hydroelectric dams serve the enrichment plants, yet this argument is obviously bogus since most of TVA’s capacity is coal fired and electrons go where they want.
Coal sequestration, moreover, remains little more than the coal industry’s pipe dream. Despite substantial federal research investments, large sequestration demonstrations are at least a decade off, and most analysts expect the costs to be prohibitive.
Including nuclear power and carbon sequestration in a Clean Energy Portfolio Standard, therefore, would do little to spur their development. It would, however, build a larger and more powerful political coalition for clean energy from renewable resources, energy recycling, and efficiency.
Interesting proposal. Rather than specify technologies, we do need to set clear goals — in terms of environmental quality — and let executives and financiers put up their own money to see which paths best get us to those goals.