Renewables Laws Changing
Mandates give way to goals
When several states a year were adding clean energy mandates in the middle of the last decade, they fell into almost predictable patterns. States from the Northeast to Colorado to the Pacific Northwest were requiring utilities to increased their clean energy procurement by double-digit, often in a time frame of about a decade.
Now, in the early years of the 2010s, renewable portfolio standards mandates seem to be replaced by goals, and rather modest ones at that. Goals, not mandates are the law, and target dates of 10 to 15 years are the new normal.
The obvious exception is California, but that aggressive goal of 33 percent by 2020 has been pursued by regulatory means for several years and was finally codified by the legislature this year.
But add Indiana to the list of RPS goal states in the recent political shift, along with Missouri earlier this year, that has scaled back formerly ambitious proposals.
The new pattern is fairly simple and not nearly as aggressive as its predecessor. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels recently signed into law a voluntary Clean Energy Portfolio Standard (CPS), which sets a goal of 10 percent of the state’s electric generation to come from clean energy sources by 2025 and incentivizes utilities to participate in the CPS.
The bill, SB 251, encourages investment in the state’s growing wind industry as well as other forms of lower-emission energy, including solar, nuclear, clean coal, and hydro. It includes an amendment offered in the Indiana House that calls for at least 50 percent of the qualifying energy obtained by Indiana utilities participating in the CPS to come from within the state.
In Missouri, the state backed away from the requirements of a 2008 ballot initiative when implementation before state regulators proved difficult. Now, under the revised bill, the Renewable Energy Act requires utilities to make a good faith effort to get 15 percent by 2021, and there are no penalties if they fail to meet the targets.
The proposed act moves away from a percentage requirement for renewable energy sales and instead substitutes a floor, in megawatts, for production capacity.
And none of this discussion even comes near to a federal mandate, whose time has apparently passed, especially if one were to exclude nuclear power.
In any case, the heady days of clean energy advocates counting on handfuls of state every year to require 20 percent green by 2020 seems to be gone for some time.
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Comments
mandates for biz reasons?
Hello Ms Glick,
Published statement
concerns some of us AARP members for reason of accusations that large-scale solar generation of electricity may be a fraud.
Suspicions that large-scale solar generation is, in fact, a fraud are heightened because
If it turns out that, in fact, large-scale solar generation of electricity is a fraud in the sense it is unable to produce the electric power advertised measured in kWh, uneconomical, and polluting
then the stipulation may be a lawyer/PRC ploy to force electric rate payers to subsidize New Mexico large-scale solar generation of electricity industry which would otherwise go out of business for economic and pollution reasons?
Response by qualified and honest engineers to questions posed to Mr Scholle should determine whether the stipulation should be removed.
Do you and the PRC hearing agree or not?
Please ack if you receive this message.
Regards,
bill