Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Todd Platts (R-Pa.) on Wednesday introduced legislation in the House to create a federal renewable electricity standard (RES) that would require the United States to draw a quarter of its electricity from clean sources by 2025. Markey also introduced a second bill that would require the country to reduce energy consumption 15 percent by 2020.
The American Renewable Energy Act [PDF] would put an RES in place starting in 2012. The legislators estimate that it would help create more than 350,000 new jobs over the next 10 years. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia already have RES’s in place, including both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, the legislators’ home states.
Markey and Platts helped get an RES passed in the House last Congress as part of the 2007 energy bill, but the provision didn’t make it through the Senate.
“With our economy in crisis, renewable energy can create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs, revitalize declining manufacturing sectors, and decrease global warming pollution,” said Markey, who chairs the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming and the energy and environment subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee.
“Establishing a federal renewable electricity standard will help to protect our environment as well as promote economic development and energy security,” said Platts.
Markey’s second bill, the Save American Energy Act [PDF], would create an energy-efficiency resource standard that mandates a 15 percent reduction in electricity demand by 2020. Markey estimates that the measure would reduce peak electricity demand by 90,000 megawatts and eliminate the need for 300 new medium-size power plants.
The Union of Concerned Scientists put out a statement in support of the RES bill, noting that it would increase power generation from renewable sources by 135 percent and provide enough clean electricity to power 150 million homes, according to its analysis.
“This electrifying standard would provide a smart, proven, cost-effective strategy to ramp up our clean energy use, create tens of thousands of jobs, and lower consumer utility bills,” said Alan Nogee, director of the UCS Clean Energy Program. “The clean energy tax incentives that Congress is finalizing will get us moving in the right direction in the near term, and the renewable energy standard makes sure we stay on that path for the foreseeable future.”
League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski also praised the bill. “This bill will create an economic demand for wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the coming years,” he said. “It will help establish a powerful, productive, and profitable clean energy industry that will employ generations of Americans.”
Copenhagen talks ready for take off: 5, 4, 3…
Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets
Comments
View as Flat
GRLCowan Posted 11:13 pm
04 Feb 2009
The insinuated falsehood tends to enrich natgas revenue recipients, including civil servants such as Markey and Platts themselves, and the deaths of innocents.
Sweden is detoxing.
--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
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Karen Street Posted 12:32 am
05 Feb 2009
19.4% nuclear, 2.5% other renewables some of which is biomass, about 22% clean.
A requirement of 25% renewables means substantial biopower. This will increase food prices, even more so if there is a strong renewable fuels requirement, and produce dirty power. The cost of electricity will also rise
I wonder at the emphasis on renewables over clean. Does anyone know?
Karen Street
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 2:57 am
05 Feb 2009
21 CREDIT.--The term `Federal renewable electricity
22 credit' means a credit, representing one kilowatt
23 hour of renewable electricity, issued pursuant to sub24
section (d)....
A retail electric supplier may satisfy the require3
ments of paragraph (1) in whole or in part by sub4
mitting in lieu of each Federal renewable electricity
5 credit, a payment equal to the lesser of--
6 ``(A) 200 percent of the average market
7 value of a Federal renewable electricity credit
8 for the previous compliance year, as determined
9 by the Secretary; or
10 ``(B) 5 cents, adjusted on January 1 of
11 each year following calendar year 2009 based
12 on the Gross Domestic Product Implicit Price
13 Deflator.
COST RECOVERY.--An electric utility, the retail
19 electricity sales of which are subject to rate regulation,
20 shall not be denied the opportunity to recover the full
21 amount of the prudently incurred incremental cost of re22
newable electricity or Federal renewable electricity credits
23 obtained, or alternative compliance payments made, to
24 comply with the requirements of subsection (c).
25
This is the price we pay for electing law school graduates instead of science and engineering graduates. They think that their laws can supersede natural law. It should be retitled the "Death for Poor People" bill.
These laws will further distort our energy systems leading to delay in development of good technology, higher prices, less reliability, and a lower quality of life here and all over the world. The people on the bottom rung of the economic ladder will suffer the most while our leaders pat themselves on the back at cocktail parties for doing such a great job.
The best solution is to level the field by adding all externalities, eliminate all subsidies and mandates, maximize R&D and let the market pick the best technology.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/1/5/132847/2209/#co ...
Instead of wasting our money propping up bad technology we should be spending it on the development of better technology.
Things Everybody Should Know About Energy
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splashy Posted 8:12 am
07 Feb 2009
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