As a strong believer in both individual freedom and free markets, I am reluctant to endorse any measure that “forces” anyone to take action that goes against their personal freedom or financial interest. That said, it is important that government establish frameworks for businesses to operate cleanly and efficiently. With reasonable parameters and regulations, free markets work and can provide Americans with sustainable, clean energy. Natural gas will be a key component of that future. Over the past ten years, inaction on climate change legislation has produced uncertainty in the market place.

As a result, utilities have chosen natural gas 90 percent on average as the fuel of choice to meet the power demands of their customers and anticipated future environmental concerns. Under a possible mandate from Congress on which types of fuel to choose – be it more wind or solar generation – more natural gas power plants will also be built in order to keep electrons flowing smoothly when energy is demanded by customers but neither the sun nor the wind cooperates. Natural gas-fired power plants are the cleanest of the fossil fuels, relatively inexpensive to build, well accepted by the public, and can be built quickly. Natural gas plants also require only a small amount of land, adding a fraction of a percent to the land needed by solar and wind generators but providing immeasurable value as backup.

Having read the numerous blogs on this subject, I have consulted my colleague, The Nature Conservancy’s energy expert, Jimmie Powell, and we would like to add two important points to the discussion:

1. While renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar and biomass are an essential element in a national strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they are not without their own environmental impacts.
   
   Some renewable sources require large amounts of land area. If large scale wind farms are sited in the wrong places, they can affect habitat for birds and other wildlife. Similarly, solar thermal facilities can dramatically alter threatened desert habitats. Biomass fueled generating plants that depend upon wood should be in balance with sustainable wood supplies.
   
   These concerns do not reflect opposition to renewable sources, just a recognition that, they, too, should be subject to sound environmental review. The Nature Conservancy is working with renewable energy developers and other conservation groups to create guidelines for alternative energy development.
   
2. Energy efficiency requires no new land for generation facilities and there are many technologies available today that would also save consumers money on their utility bills. Efficiency could reduce the need for new generation facilities by forty percent protecting land and consumer pocketbooks.
   
   The just-approved economic stimulus legislation makes important investments in energy efficiency. Congress should make energy efficiency the top priority in our electricity system and address the market failures that keep additional efficiency investments from being made. Efficiency should be counted first toward any electricity standard that Congress imposes.

A national renewable electricity standard (RES) is critical for diversifying our electricity sources, creating green collar jobs, and making a down payment on reducing global warming pollution.

President Obama has made a commitment to a 25 percent renewable electricity by 2025. This standard would more than double the capacity of clean, renewable power in the United States above and beyond current state and federal policies, and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. It also would save consumers a cumulative $2 billion on electricity and natural gas bills by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

While those savings are relatively small, a 25-percent-by-2025 RES would provide a number of benefits to the U.S. economy that could be realized at no net cost to consumers. It would:

• diversify the country’s portfolio of fuel sources, strengthening national energy security.
• increase our use of renewable sources, insulate the economy from fuel shortages and price spikes, and reduce the demand for and price of natural gas.
• reduce U.S. dependence on fuel imports.
• create twice as many jobs per dollar or per kilowatt hour as fossil fuels.
• reduce the environmental damage from fuel extraction, processing, transport and waste disposal.
• generate considerably less air and water pollution than fossil fuels.
• reduce annual power plant carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 621 million metric tons by 2025—the equivalent of taking more than 100 million cars off the road—at no net cost to the economy, according the EIA.
  

A national RES would work hand-in-hand with a carbon cap, but would begin reducing emissions right away. In fact, because an RES cuts emissions at negative cost, it would reduce the costs of complying with a cap.

While 28 states currently have renewable electricity standards—demonstrating that the policy can be very effective—we need a national standard to fully realize the economic benefits to, spread the investment costs and the benefits fairly among all states, and achieve economies of scale that continue to drive down costs. A national standard should not replace state standards, however. It should set a floor that states could augment with stronger standards and new innovations.

Large and small utilities would be able to comply with such a standard. They could build renewable energy sources on their own or in partnership with other companies, and they could purchase renewable energy credits in a national market.

Any standard should include wind, solar, geothermal and bioenergy. Hydroelectric power also is a renewable energy source, but the potential for construction of new dams is limited and existing projects generally do not need incentives to continue operating. Therefore, only increased output at existing dams should qualify under an RES.

Nuclear energy should not be included in an RES. Nuclear fuel will never be renewable. The uranium it uses is a finite resource, most of which is imported. It does not diversify our energy portfolio with new sources, a primary goal of the RES. Furthermore, nuclear energy is beset by mining, waste disposal, safety, security and financial risks.

Some opponents of a national RES argue that the Southeast couldn’t comply with a strong standard. But analyses by the EIA and my own organization conclude that all regions, including the Southeast, would benefit from a strong national RES.

Congress should take a holistic view of our energy needs and recognize formally that it will take a portfolio of clean technologies to meet them. Given that U.S. electricity demand is expected to increase by 21% by 2030 and the need to reduce carbon emissions, a clean energy portfolio is a better framework for success than focusing solely on renewable energy sources.

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Indiana on Monday, President Obama said the country that figures out how to make cheaper energy that’s also clean, “that country is going to win the economic competition of the future.” One-third of America’s electricity production is carbon-free, and nuclear energy is responsible for nearly 75% of this electricity at a cost that is lower than coal and one-third the cost of power produced from natural gas.

If our goal is to increase production of carbon-free electricity, we should include all sources of low-carbon electricity production and energy efficiency and conservation measures in a clean-energy portfolio standard. Preserving flexibility in how companies meet growing electricity demand is important. Intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar make sense in those regions with wind and solar resources, but may make less sense in other regions. Others who have posted responses to this question rightly have warned about the transmission constraints and the difficulty of siting new transmission capacity to bring renewables to market.

Independent analysis shows that any credible initiative to reduce carbon emissions will require additional nuclear energy capacity. This fact is universally recognized by policy organizations at both ends of the political spectrum, national scientific organizations from 13 nations and independent consulting firms. In its analysis of how to reduce U.S. electric sector carbon emissions to 1990 levels, the Electric Power Research Institute found that 64,000 megawatts of new nuclear capacity must be added to the existing 100,000 MW of nuclear power capacity. The EPRI analysis also doubles the expansion of renewable energy capacity from the Energy Information Administration’s forecast.

As it did in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, Congress should focus on financing to accelerate deployment of new clean power sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear power, energy efficiency and transmission capacity. This can be accomplished through improvements to the existing loan guarantees program or the creation of a clean energy development bank that provides financing assistance for low-carbon energy sources.

ACC strongly supports greater use of renewable energy as part of a comprehensive energy policy built on energy diversity, efficiency and conservation, and expanded domestic oil and natural gas production. Energy diversity – that is, renewable energy along with sources and technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear energy, and combined heat and power systems – will be essential to meeting America’s energy needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, growing the economy, and enhancing security. Chemistry helps drive clean energy solutions, as our products are relied on for renewable energy technologies (e.g. wind turbines, solar panels, lithium-ion batteries) as well as energy-saving items (e.g. building insulation, lightweight vehicle parts, compact fluorescent light bulbs, thermal coatings, energy-efficient appliances, automotive and industrial lubricants, low rolling resistance tires, vinyl windows).

We believe a national policy that mandates the use of a single type of clean energy and excludes others is not the best way to get to lower greenhouse gas emissions. What’s needed is government incentives to propel the development and implementation of clean energy – open to all lower-emission energy sources and technologies – and transmission infrastructure to get clean electricity to market. With the focus on wind and solar-generated electricity alone, other vital clean energy sources and technologies would fail to develop, and the United States would end up with an artificially restricted portfolio of clean electricity sources. To deliver the clean electricity capacity needed, we’ll need to look to all types of sources.

It’s important to recognize that utilities are not the nation’s only power producers. Many industrial companies can and do produce low-emission electricity. For example, chemistry companies are among the leading producers of clean electricity using combined heat and power systems. Rather than shut us out, Congress should allow industrial facilities to be part of the clean electricity solution.

The forest products industry is the leading producer and user of renewable biomass energy. In fact, the amount of energy we produce from biomass exceeds total solar, wind, and geothermal energy generation combined. Sixty-five percent of the energy used at American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) member company paper and wood products facilities is generated onsite from carbon-neutral renewable biomass. Our industry also is a leader in highly efficient co-generation technology, and we co-generate electric power, much of it from biomass, for both internal use and for sale to the power grid.

Given the forest products industry’s leadership in renewable energy, AF&PA supports the goals of a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) but we oppose federal RES proposals that do not recognize existing renewable energy producers and provide equal treatment with new market entrants.

As the demand for biomass-based power increases, forest product companies could be at a significant competitive disadvantage without equal treatment for their renewable power because they will be competing for biomass—the raw material for their products and fuel source for their own renewable, carbon-neutral power—against new renewable energy companies that will be able to qualify for, and generate revenue from, Renewable Energy Credits (RECs).

Moreover, since regulated public utilities complying with an RES would be able to simply pass on their compliance costs to customers—such as large users like forest products companies—they could pay more for wood biomass which could drive up marketplace costs for our industry’s raw materials. In contrast, forest products companies operate in a competitive global market and cannot pass on higher raw material and energy costs to their customers and expect to remain in business.

Forest products manufacturing facilities are major customers of utilities. Nobody benefits if a policy compels those customers to compete against their energy suppliers on a playing field that is so uneven that the customers’ survival is jeopardized. Since 2006, the housing crisis and the economic downturn have cost our industry 190,000 jobs—15 percent of our workforce. These jobs are critical for the survival of the rural communities where our facilities are often located.

While RES legislation currently proposed in the Senate would recognize the small portion of our industry’s existing renewable electricity that is sold to third parties, the credits are not tradable. More importantly, the legislation does not provide credit for the renewable energy which forest products facilities generate and use onsite.

Onsite renewable energy displaces fossil fuel use and is an important part of the nation’s renewable energy picture. The government should not pick winners and losers among renewable energy players. The more that renewable energy can be produced and used onsite, the better it will be for the nation. We are setting ambitious national goals and need all available renewable power to qualify as part of the program.

Launching the Renewable Revolution: The smart way to save money and create jobs

In a bi-partisan effort to create jobs, save consumers money and re-power our energy sector, I have joined with Rep. Todd Platts (R-Pa.) to introduce the American Renewable Energy Act in the House. Our legislation would set a renewable electricity standard, ensuring that America is generating a quarter of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2025.

This legislation is consistent with President Obama’s clean energy goals, and is supported by Governors, mayors and business leaders across the country who see wind, solar and geothermal solutions for our economic and security needs.

With our economy in crisis, shedding almost 600,000 jobs last month alone, the American Renewable Energy Act will help stop this slide by creating hundreds of thousands of new green jobs, revitalizing our declining manufacturing sector, and decreasing global warming pollution.

To compliment this renewable legislation, I have also introduced an energy efficiency bill called the Save American Energy Act. It introduces an energy efficiency standard that reduces electricity demand by fifteen percent by 2020, cost-effectively cutting electricity demand for homes and buildings. The two measures will create more than a half million jobs and will save consumers more than $180 billion.

I look forward to working with Congressman Platts to usher in a renewable revolution. Last Congress, he and I joined together in passing the landmark 35 mile per gallon fuel standard. With this new legislation, we aim to achieve similar success.

Yes, the national renewable electricity standard is an idea whose time has finally come. A national standard of 25 percent renewable-based electricity by the year 2025 offers a least-cost, market-friendly way to ensure that we meet an increasing share of America’s growing electricity needs with clean, domestic energy resources--the goal put forward by the Obama Administration. Wind and other renewable energy sources are currently available, rapidly deployable and cost-effective options to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the RES will provide a “down payment” on solving climate change by ramping up their use in the near-term.


The 28 individual state RES programs have helped to jump start renewable development in the U.S., but a national program is necessary in order to maximize renewable energy development and allow all states to enjoy the benefits of lower-cost renewable energy development. Climate change is a national problem--we need a national solution that leads to significant reductions in greenhouse gases across the nation.

The long-term predictability of a national RES will enable the renewable energy industries to attract investment capital and achieve manufacturing economies of scale that will spur economic development, lower consumer prices, strengthen U.S. energy security, and help our environment. In addition, a national RES would provide the long-term market and incentives to upgrade our electricity transmission infrastructure, which is essential to increasing the use of renewables.

A federal standard should not “replace” state programs, but it should respect states’ rights to set higher renewable targets. States should also be free to determine how their renewable energy credits (RECs) are treated when the credits are used to meet a state standard that is stricter than a national RES.

A national RES will work now: it will use currently available clean technology and create immediate emission reductions.

President Obama’s commitment to a federal renewable energy standard—requiring that we get 25 percent of our electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar—is an important step in moving our country to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future. The Wilderness Society, like many groups who advocate for a federal Renewable Electricity Standard, agrees that the “25 by 2025” goal is a good one, and that a strategy of harnessing the renewable, sustainable power of the earth’s winds, the sun’s rays, and the ground’s heat is the direction in which we need to go if we are to move our country away from its unhealthy dependence on the fossil fuels that are the chief cause of global warming.

We applaud the states that already have moved forward in setting state renewable energy standards, but believe that a new federal standard is needed as well. Setting a federal standard will send a strong signal to the markets that renewables are a good place to invest—that they’re a smart investment because they’ll be viable long into the future. A new federal standard should not replace the state standards already on the books. Rather, it should build on the experience of the states and work within existing state policy frameworks to apply the lessons state regulators have already learned about renewable energy.

This week, Congress has begun crafting a federal standard for renewable energy. I believe there are two over-arching policy considerations that should guide this work.

First, policymakers should not overlook the tremendous potential in developing small “distributed energy” renewable projects. Harnessing energy at sites on or near the places where it is used is an extremely cost-effective approach, and this needs to be recognized in any federal standard that’s developed. When homeowners and small businesses harness clean renewable energy—for example, by installing roof-top solar panels or small-scale wind turbines for their own use—these efforts must count toward the overall 25 percent renewable energy goal and should be rewarded. It’s also important for any national renewable energy standard to include incentives for individuals and businesses to construct these important small renewable energy projects.

Second, it’s critical that as we develop more renewable energy, we balance this goal with the equally important mission of safeguarding our nation’s precious public lands and biodiversity. We need to ensure that the quick and intelligent deployment of renewable energy development is matched by a commitment to safeguard national forests, wilderness areas, national parks, and wildlife refuges. As we develop a new national policy on renewables, we need to assure that development occurs in the most appropriate places first. It’s the best way—the only way—to ensure we can meet the targets in a federal Renewable Electricity Standard, and I’m confident that American ingenuity is up to the challenge.

I will preface my answer by noting that for its part, NARUC has not taken a position on legislation establishing a national renewable portfolio standard. However, there is a great deal of evidence that shows that the nation’s State utility regulators are supportive of encouraging renewable generation.

Indeed, as the question suggests, States are already taking the lead on this and have been doing so for years. Some States moved ahead as a way to spur the federal government into acting, while others are more recently exploring the option and are setting goals instead of mandates, as the utilities in these States do not have ready access to renewable resources.

Regardless of the level of renewable generation that legislation may require, NARUC has been clear in its position that Congress should not dictate to States on how costs incurred by RPS compliance should be recovered. We have maintained this position because ratemaking and retail regulation is not conducive to a single uniform approach.

Legislation considered by Congress in recent sessions has sought to mandate that utilities’ costs associated with an RPS should automatically be passed through to ratepayers. Not only this entirely inconsistent with the role of State regulators, it unfairly burdens retail consumers who may be forced to pay for compliance costs without receiving any renewable resources.

Depending on how the RPS is crafted, utilities may opt to pay a fine rather than develop their own or buy renewable resources from a third party. If a utility is guaranteed recovery of their costs associated with an RPS, the penalty would actually be passed through to consumers. This situation should not prevent State commissions from reviewing the prudence of the utility’s decision on whether the utility paid the fine.

If these costs are reviewed by State regulators, consumers can have the assurance of knowing that they will not be paying for anything that has not been reviewed or approved by their independent public service commissioners.

The potential risks of adverse impacts on retail electric customers and local economies stemming from an inappropriate Federal mandate are significant and must be considered.

This administration's plans should be much more far-reaching than simply a Renewable Portfolio Standard. Right now, our electricity grid is about one-third "green", i.e nationally, it is 20 percent nuclear, 8-9 percent hydro and a 3-4 percent renewables. We should be setting our sights higher, to map out how we can get the electricity grid to be 50 percent green, and then, a target date to move it upward to 75 percent green...and to do that, the plans for these national goals should include nuclear energy. Similarly, clean coal technologies need to be investigated to the point they can either be adapted to the 50+ percent of coal-fired power currently in use, or demonstrated not to be viable.

Renewable energy standards would be unnecessary if we lived in a world where energy prices reflected the true price of our carbon emissions. But we don’t live in that world, and probably won’t for quite a long time.

Instead, we subsidize the dirtiest producers of electricity in our nation. Power plants built decades ago are the beneficiaries of very generous grandfathering under the Clean Air Act. Because they are exempted from the environmental regulations that apply to newer plants, they save money in compliance costs, but we all pay the price of greater pollution. By continuing to excuse the worst polluters from emission control requirements, we severely undercut the economic incentive to switch to cleaner energy production.

The military cost of attempting to ensure reliable access to foreign oil is another type of subsidy to nonrenewable energy. We hide the immense cost of keeping the oil flowing, so drivers don’t feel this financial burden at the pump. The result is greater consumption of foreign oil than would be desirable.

More generally, we don’t yet have a mechanism in place to internalize the social costs of carbon. Through either a carbon tax or a cap and trade system, a price would be placed on the use of fossil-fuels, creating an economic incentive to both conserve energy and switch to alternative energy sources. There are reasons to be somewhat optimistic that such a policy might be on the horizon but we are not quite there yet.

If we were somehow able to eliminate the existing subsidies to nonrenewable energy and adopted a carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme, there would be no reason to have nonrenewable energy standards. Nonrenewable energy would then be produced to the point at which it was socially advantageous to do so, in light of the comparative costs and comparative ancillary impacts (including impacts on the environment, public health, and national security) of different forms of energy. Further incentives to nonrenewable energy would be socially undesirable.

However, in the second-best world in which we live, mechanisms to support clean energy are desirable as a bridge to a smarter, more holistic policy that eliminates the current, undesirable subsidies and adopts an appropriate carbon pricing approach. Until existing imbalances are eliminated, it would make sense for the Obama administration to implement short-term mechanisms to create incentivizes for clean energy. But the longer-term focus should be on trying to move away from this approach as quickly as possible as it can only be a stop gap measure treating a symptom and not the disease.

Moreover, we should pay close attention to the type of incentives provided for renewable energy. A command-and-control scheme requiring a given proportion of nonrenewable energy would be unduly inflexible and inefficient. Firms will face a variety of circumstances, including access to wind and hydro resources, capital stocks at various points in their useful lifetime, and demand projections. A “one-size-fits-all” approach is likely to gloss over those differences, demanding too much of some and not enough of others.

Instead, it would be better to provide direct subsidies for renewable forms of energy. In this way, firms will face appropriate incentives, and will be able to tailor their responses to their particular circumstances.

Renewable portfolio standards are a valuable tool to achieve our environment and energy goals, but we shouldn’t be telling states how to manage their energy needs when they are already effectively doing that on their own. The fact that state RPS’s now cover more than 50 percent of our electricity demand shows that a state-by-state approach is working. Importantly, this approach allows each state to take into account the availability of wind, solar and other energy sources within their borders. By contrast, a uniform mandate imposed on all would place electricity suppliers in states with scant resources in an unfair position as they would be forced to buy offsets from states in more resource-rich geographies. Rather than create such an imbalance, we should be encouraging every state to legislate an RPS up to the boundaries of what their unique situations allow.

Where the federal government should focus its efforts is supporting loan guarantees and other financial mechanisms to help utilities build the solar arrays, wind farms and transmission line upgrades required to meet state RPS mandates. Utilities are facing the greatest investment challenge in their history, with at least $1.5 trillion in infrastructure investment needed by 2030, according to a report released last year by economic consulting firm The Brattle Group. If we can’t help them absorb some of those costs, it won’t matter where we set the bar.

No matter whether these mandates fall to the states or the federal government, they should include all technology options that can help us in the fight against climate change, and that includes emissions-free nuclear energy and environmentally responsible clean coal. Successfully crafted clean energy policies will expand our options, not limit them.

"Renewable" and "low carbon" are not synonyms. An RPS is the wrong answer to the CO2 problem. By placing an inordinate focus on a limited number of renewable energy sources, legislators are neglecting numerous other options that can make significant contributions to the larger social goal of an adequate supply of clean, low-carbon, reliable, and affordable electricity. A prime example of a strategy that deserves more attention is energy efficiency.

Rather than specifying a winning technology, Congress should specify the goals—reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, enhance energy security, maintain electric supply reliability, and control costs—and provide incentives to reach them. Since no current technology meets all goals, legislators must consider tradeoffs. Specifying the goals,rather than the technologies will lead to a technology race that will serve society.

Instead of enacting a national RPS, Congress should:

• Handle conventional pollution discharges through legislation and the Environmental Protection Agency.

• Handle greenhouse gas emissions through legislation such as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system that addresses such emissions explicitly.

• Handle energy security through energy efficiency programs such as equipment performance standards and consumer incentives and through maintainance of a high petroleum price.

• Maintain reliability through close monitoring of the new Electric Reliability Organization and of generating capacity and demand.

• Control costs through efficiency standards and encouraging a diverse portfolio of generating fuels, but avoid mandates to deploy expensive technologies. Rather, it should allow the market to determine the least-cost generation.

Impatience to solve current problems has resulted in aggressive renewable portfolio standards with strict deadlines. Although renewable technologies will help attain social goals, mandating rapid, massive deployment of these technologies will result in high cost, disputes over land use, and unreliable electricity, leading to a public backlash against these policies. The United States needs to focus on the goals, provide substantial incentives to meet them, and avoid polices that exclude economical ways to meet the goals.

A national RPS is a bad idea for three reasons. First, there are several other practical and often less expensive ways to generate electricity with low carbon dioxide emissions. Second, renewable sources such as wind, geothermal, and solar are located far from where most people live. This means that huge numbers of unpopular and expensive transmission lines would have to be built to get the power to where it could be used. Third, since many doubt that all the needed transmission lines would be built, a national RPS without sufficient transmission would force a city like Atlanta to buy renewable credits, essentially bribing North Dakota to use their wind power locally. However, the abundant renewable resources and low population in these areas mean that supply could exceed local demand. Although the grid can handle 20% of its power coming from an intermittent source such as wind, it is well beyond the state of the art to handle 50% or more in one area. At that percentage, supply disruptions become much more likely, and the highly interconnected electricity grid is subject to cascading blackouts when there is a disturbance, even one in a remote area.

A national RPS would be expensive and difficult to attain; it could cause a backlash that might doom renewable energy even in the areas where it is abundant and economic. Instead, congress should specify a limit on CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour of electric power production, and let the lowest cost solutions win.

A major energy bill has been passed and signed into law in each of the last two Congresses. Those bills modernized our electricity laws, increased our use of biofuels, significantly improved our energy efficiency and reduced fossil fuel consumption via a new vehicle fuel efficiency standard. But one key provision failed to make it into either of those bills: a national standard requiring that a percentage of electricity sold by electric utilities come from renewable energy sources.

The Senate has introduced a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) again and again, only to see the proposal rejected or not brought up for a vote. But, with a new Congress comes new opportunity, and I like the odds that a RES is going to reach President Obama’s desk this time.

A strong renewable portfolio standard is an essential component of any comprehensive national energy policy -- not just an important part of such a strategy, but an essential component.

The benefits are clear. The RES would reduce our dependence on traditional, polluting sources of electricity, reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources, reduce the growing pressure on natural gas as a fuel for generation of electricity, reduce the price of natural gas, create new jobs, make a start on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, increase our energy security, and enhance the reliability of the electricity grid.

This proposal would require retail sellers of electricity who sell more than 4 million megawatt hours per year to provide 20 percent of that electricity from renewable resources by the year 2021. The requirement would be ramped up in increments to allow planning flexibility. (For additional details on the proposal, go here.)

Congress has tried before to spur the development of renewables and reduce our consumption of harmful fossil fuels. But, we can not seriously talk about reducing emissions without increasing our use of renewable energy and the best way to do that is by implementing a renewable electricity standard.

The environmental benefits are clear. The RES would result, according to EIA, in a 6.7% reduction in carbon emissions in the year 2030. That is a reduction of 222 million tons in that year alone.

A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that the RES would result in $16.4 billion in savings to consumers on electricity and natural gas bills. It also reported a seven percent reduction in carbon emissions.

In other words, we can save natural gas, reduce CO2 emissions and save money on both electricity and natural gas bills.

Support for the RES is strong in this nation. Recent polls have shown that support. Environmental groups from the Sierra Club to Natural Resources Defense Council, industrial associations from the renewable trade groups to utilities have all supported the RES.

My RES proposal promotes a policy to develop an energy future which relies on its own resources, enhances our nation’s security, provides for cleaner air and water and begins to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide into the air. It is a low cost, effective, market-driven way to accomplish those goals.