At first it almost seemed like "green washing."  Industries were cutting back on power demands in a major way even before the recent recession happened.  Diversifying into clean enerygy helped - such as with government grants - but at the end of the day the people writing the checks paid less to get power, kilowatt hours (which applies even to internal combustion engines).  I am very impressed with the change in attitude, to say the least - although economics drove most of it.

True, there are some utility regulations that don't create incentives to lower much of anything, although I think those days might be over.  In that sense, the Waxman bill might be symbolic but a really big deal.  I'll grant you that about two-thirds of real business is very concerned about the "bottom line" and really wants to do the right thing - saving money.  The notion that such a thing will reduce CO2 only makes it better.  Clifford "Sammy" Well

Unfortunately, the bill could also result in nothing but transfer payments from states with low clean energy deployment to those with higher clean energy deployment (like Texas, California, etc. driven by state RESs).  John Wilson at SACE gets into this somewhat, and so does UCS (in their low deployment scenario).

The problem: under the federal RES, two renewable energy credits/certificates (aka RECs) are created for every megawatt-hour (MWh) of renewable electricity produced.  One can be used for compliance with a state RES and one for federal compliance with the RES.  If a utility in California or Texas, for example (or any other state with a state RES higher than this federal standard) needs 15 state RECs to comply with their state RES, they'll produce 15 units of renewable electricity.  They'll also get 15 federal RECs for the same electricity MWhs.  Now say they only need 10 to comply with the federal RES.  They now have 5 federal RECs they can sell to utilities in Tennessee or Georgia or Oklahoma and let those utilities off the hook from their federal requirements too. 

That's a clear case of double counting but as the bill stands, it's up to each state with a state RES to decide if they want to let their utilities do this, or if they will require retirement of the excess federal RECs that match the state RECs required by their RES.  If they don't do that, states with RESs higher than the federal standard will only be helping other states w/out RESs comply with the federal standard.  It won't result in additional renewable electricity generation. 

Why the heck would a state want to allow that?  Well, because their utilities will net the proceeds of those REC sales - hence the transfer payments from South and East to West and Midwest.  Their utilities will argue vociferously (as they did in Oregon when I was a renewable energy advocate there and had to deal with this issue the last time an RES was debated in Congress in 2007 and 2008) that they will use the proceeds to cut their customers' utility bills and that not opting to do this effectively means states are requiring higher rates for their customers (and they'd be bad bad people for doing that, right?!). 

This is a fairly compelling argument that will have to be fought off in every state that has an RES exceeding the federal one (which is most of them).  In many of those states, it will likely be a losing battle, since Public Utility Commissions often put rates before any other priority (that's usually their top priority). 

This turd stinks any way you step on it.