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Climate Legislation Introduced in Washington, Includes RPS Provision

April 1, 2009 | 5 Comments

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Washington, D.C., United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] Chairman Henry Waxman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and Chairman Edward Markey of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee and Select Committee on Global Warming have released a draft of clean energy legislation. Called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), the legislation could serve as a new overall approach to America's energy policy that, if passed will move the nation closer to having a clean energy economy.

The legislation has four titles, clean energy, energy efficiency, reducing pollution and transitioning to a clean energy economy.

“This legislation will create millions of clean energy jobs, put America on the path to energy independence, and cut global warming pollution.” Chairman Waxman said. “Our goal is to strengthen our economy by making America the world leader in new clean energy and energy efficiency technologies.”

The legislation has four titles, clean energy, energy efficiency, reducing pollution and transitioning to a clean energy economy.

Renewable Energy: The draft promotes renewable energy by requiring retail electricity suppliers to meet a certain percentage of their load with electricity generated from renewable resources, like wind, biomass, solar, and geothermal. The renewable electricity requirement begins at 6% in 2012 and gradually rises to 25% in 2025. The governor of any state may choose to meet one fifth of this requirement with energy efficiency measures.

The draft also contains provisions to facilitate the deployment of a smart grid, including measures to reduce utility peak loads through smart grid and demand response applications and to help promote smart grid capabilities in new home appliances. It also directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to reform the regional planning process to modernize the electric grid and provide for new transmission lines to carry electricity generated from renewable sources.

Energy Efficiency: This title provides incentives and creates program to increase energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy, including buildings, appliances, transportation and industry.

Reducing Global Warming Pollution: The global warming provisions in the discussion draft are modeled closely on the recommendations of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a coalition of electric utilities, oil companies, chemical companies, automobile manufacturers, other manufacturers, energy companies and environmental organizations.

The draft establishes a market-based program for reducing global warming pollution from electric utilities, oil companies, large industrial sources, and other covered entities that collectively are responsible for 85% of U.S. global warming emissions. The draft also allows covered entities to increase their emissions above their allowances if they can obtain “offsetting” reductions at lower cost from other sources.

Transitioning to a Clean Energy Economy: One section authorizes the Secretary of Education to award grants to universities and colleges to develop curriculum and training programs that prepare students for careers in renewable energy, energy efficiency and other forms of climate change mitigation. The discussion draft also notes that a worker transition section remains to be provided.

The Energy and Commerce Committee will complete consideration of the legislation by Memorial Day. The preliminary schedule follows:

Week of April 20: Energy and Environment Subcommittee Hearings
Week of April 27: Energy and Environment Subcommittee Markup Period Begins
Week of May 11: Full Energy and Commerce Committee Markup Period Begins

Click here to read the full draft of the legislation.

Click here to read the summary of the legislation.

RenewableEnergyWorld.com will continue to follow this legislation as it moves through Congress this year. Check back with us everyday.

Bioenergy, Hydropower, Ocean Energy, Solar Energy, Wind Power, Energy Efficiency

5 Reader Comments

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1 of 5

mike-holly-17241

April 1, 2009

Propaganda. They should change RPS to WPS (wind portfolio standards) to reflect the favoritism for wind energy. Our renewable energy company opposes renewable portfolio standards unless combined with feed-in tariffs. The current use of competitive bidding has allowed utility monopolies to rig the bids for their own generators, affiliates and even friends, especially those in the wind industry (while their regulator friends sit on their hands).

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2 of 5

Clint_LeRoy

April 1, 2009

I concur what Mike states as my feelings on this matter. I would also like to add Micro-hydro as a potential in providing a source of renewable energy most overlook. In the northeast before there was electricity, many small hamlets and villages where the blacksmith and grinding mills were present, a water wheel produced the energy need to do the work. Those same still standing structures are now using electricity where they could be generating it. A good place to look is here: http://www.spoom.org/

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3 of 5

Derek-Boyle

April 3, 2009

Feed in tariffs is another issue. In Georgia, a utility has been allowed to charge for the full $5 Billion plus construction costs for a Nuclear power plant (which may go as high as $15 Billion for a 1~1.6 Gigawatt of power available in 10~15 years, where as $15 Billion can develop about 5~6 GW of renewable energy power in 1~3 years) to residents in advance of it being built. There are lots of issues to go around.

With that understanding, this is the single most important Top down legislation needed to prompt States to stop suckling from the Coal industry trough. Thankfully many states are enacting RPS on their own, in advance of federal rules, but many of these are watered down by Coal and Oil company lobbyists. The Coal industry is destroying out mountains, and polluting our water sources, and air. We absolutely have to move away from this destructive resource and the RPS is the first step in prodding that process. Southeastern states have an overabundance of Bio resources, the west has Wind, Solar, Water, and Geothermal, and the east has plenty of Solar, and off-shore Wind. Failure to develop these resources and provide clean energy and jobs for future generations is not an option.

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Derek-Boyle

April 3, 2009

Feed in tariffs are not necessarily a bad thing, as they allow renewable energy development costs and benefits to be shared by all. This is preferable over allowing other countries to hold us hostage to their energy supplies, fossil fuel pollution, water requirements for fossil fuels, etc. After energy, Water is another huge looming issue and curtailing water use in energy production is also served by transforming to a clean energy economy. Other questions we are asking ourselves is do we want our troops to have to fight and die for the sake of fossil fuels produced in the Middle East, or can we all pay a few pennies more to develop our own resources and gain the ability to export clean energy technology instead of troops.

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david-doty-31004

April 8, 2009

It is good to see in the details of the Waxman-Markey bill, p. 66, that the objective is to reduce lifecycle CO2 emissions from transportation fuels by 5% by 2023, and 10% by 2030, as determined by established scientific methods and based on energy content. This is impossible for biofuels. Present analysis, which ignore land-use changes, estimates most domestic biofuels to be only 25% carbon neutral. Many experts expect when land-use change is included, corn-based biofuels will be only 15% carbon neutral. Hence, to achieve even a 5% lifecycle reduction in CO2 using corn-based ethanol (which has only 2/3 the energy of gasoline or diesel) might require a complete switch to E85. Many "experts" mistakenly believe that cellulosic ethanol will have much higher carbon neutrality. However, under 29% of the carbon in the feedstocks ends up in cellulosic ethanol. It will likely result in much of the biocarbon that is currently sequestered in soils and forest floors being much more rapidly released. A comprehensive lifecycle analysis may show some cellulosic ethanol proposals to be worse than conventional fuels.

Our only hope for approaching the objective of 10% lifecycle CO2 reduction from transportation fuels by 2030 is recycling CO2 into standard fuels (gasoline, ethanol, jet fuel, diesel) using off-peak wind energy. These WindFuels can be over 90% carbon neutral, and they can be cheaper than cellulosic ethanol within 7 years.

The science for WindFuels is absolutely sound. It's been thoroughly reviewed by dozens of distinguished, world-class scientists. Five peer-reviewed technical papers are expected to publish this summer. There is already an enormous amount of detailed technical information on the windfuels web site. Making gasoline, ethanol, diesel, and jet fuel from effluent CO2 requires clean energy, and the cheapest source for now is off-peak wind. The DOE needs to support WindFuels in a big way.

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