Advanced Energy Perspectives

Photo of the Colorado State Capitol courtesy of Ryan Tolene and used under a Creative Commons License. 

Ever since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the final version of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) on August 3, the rule’s 1,560 pages of dense text (and an equally daunting pile of Technical Support Documents) have kept legal analysts and policy wonks busy and bleary-eyed. Perhaps the most important group of readers, however, are state regulators, the officials tasked with producing a state plan for implementation.

Across the country — including in states whose attorneys general are pursuing legal action — regulators are checking where their states stand (see below), asking questions, convening stakeholders, and making plans to comply — or not. In this post, we look at states that are getting ready to develop compliance plans, whether they like the CPP or not. Tomorrow, we will post a look at the states that are showing no sign of preparing to submit a plan, whether they don’t have to, they haven’t decided how to respond, or they just refuse to — in which case EPA will impose a federal plan.

(BAU stands for Business As Usual case, or the reference case.)

As advanced energy has, well, advanced over the past few decades, the conversation has advanced as well. Whereas in decades past the challenge was convincing folks that solar and wind could power anything larger than a 17th century grain mill, the challenge now is getting past the notion that the power grid can handle only so much wind and solar, which are variable resources. But that idea, too, is starting to go the way of the windmills of yore. So says the Wall Street Journal.

In his State of the State speech in January, Gov. Jerry Brown announced his Administration’s determination to extend California’s climate and energy goals to 2030. The Governor called for strengthening the state’s renewable and energy efficiency goals and for steep reductions in the use of petroleum, capturing the goals in a catchy formula: 50-50-50. Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León took up the challenge and introduced SB 350. The bill, supported actively by AEE, called for raising the RPS to 50%, increasing efficiency in existing buildings by 50%, and reducing petroleum usage by 50%. It came down to literally the 11^th hour of the session, but the groundbreaking bill passed the legislature on September 11 – minus the oil-reduction goal. Still, it was a big step forward for California’s already nation-leading energy and climate policies – and on reducing petroleum use, Gov. Brown vowed to fight another day.

The EPA’s Clean Power Plan is big news. But what exactly does it mean for the industry that is expected to make it work? Greentech Media’s Julia Pyper sat down with AEE Senior Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs Malcolm Woolf for an episode of Rewired, GTM’s video series, that lays out his top five takeaways from the Clean Power Plan for the advanced energy industry – and all in five minutes.

1) Strong Market Signal Through 2030 

“The Clean Power Plan definitely helps lock in continued growth for the advanced energy sector,” said Woolf. The advanced energy industry is worth more than $200 billion a year in the U.S. and growing at a rate five times faster than the overall U.S. economy last year. The Clean Power Plan sends a strong market signal that this growth will continue over the coming years.

The U.S. solar market has been growing at an astronomical rate in recent years, reaching a new milestone of more than 20 GW of total operational solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity. The Washington Post declared “Solar energy is poised for yet another record year,” referencing GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association’s Q2 2015 U.S. Solar Market Insight report released this week. According to the report, the U.S. installed 1,393 MW of solar PV, bringing total installed capacity to 22.7 GW - enough to power 4.6 million American homes. The growth was driven by 729 MW of utility-scale solar projects, as well as residential solar, that generated a record quarter of 70 percent growth year-over-year. And that’s just the beginning.