Advanced Energy Perspectives

On June 30, the proposed Clean Energy Incentive Program (CEIP)—an early action program under EPA’s Clean Power Plan—was published in the Federal Register, initiating a 60-day comment period. It’s enough to give us a case of déjà vu, as EPA has already taken comment on CEIP twice before. The program was first introduced last August alongside the final CPP and proposed Federal Plan rulemaking. EPA asked for comments on the entire Federal Plan rule, including CEIP, by January 21, 2016. Then, on October 21, 2015, the Agency issued a separate “Clean Energy Incentive Program Next Steps” document that asked stakeholders for input on specific elements of the CEIP by December 15, 2015, and opened a non-regulatory docket to receive responses to these questions. On the basis of that input, EPA developed the latest proposed CEIP rulemaking. That’s a lot of bureaucratic process. What’s important, however, is that, over the course of all this, the CEIP has evolved. For now, we’ll hold our opinions on what does and doesn’t work in the revised proposal, but you can read on for an overview of what the proposal actually says.

Following the Clean Power Plan has been a waiting game lately. Waiting for court dates, waiting for state planning decisions, waiting to learn what the next President will make of the CPP. We’re excited that the waiting game for the proposed Clean Energy Incentive Program is over (and we’re wasting no time diving in), but we’re also still waiting for the final model trading rules.

That doesn’t mean this time is going to waste. While the CPP winds its way through the courts, analysts of all sorts are frantically crunching numbers and cranking out modeling scenarios to give us all a better picture of what the CPP means for our future electricity system. Spoiler alert: It looks pretty much like the one we’ve got now, just with a lot more advanced energy. Even bigger spoiler: We’re already well on our way to CPP-required levels of emissions.

In May, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released “Phase II” of its reliability assessment of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). Those of us familiar with NERC’s Initial Reliability Report and its “Phase I” report were bracing for an exaggerated list of reliability threats we saw as inconsistent with current trends in the electricity system. What we got was quite different. The new NERC in a nutshell: Change is coming, CPP or not. But before we dig in, let’s recap the earlier reports, which did so much to raise concerns about the CPP.

After the Supreme Court’s decision to stay the Clean Power Plan (CPP), all eyes have been on June 2, the date the D.C. Circuit Court was scheduled to hear oral arguments on the merits of the rule. That goal post just got pushed back—but the delay is likely to speed up the final Supreme Court decision.

This post was originally published in Up For Debate on Bloomberg Government. 

While much attention is focused on legal challenges to EPA’s Clean Power Plan, profound change is brewing far from D.C. Across the nation, state regulators and electric utilities are remaking the regulatory frameworks and business models that have governed our electricity system for decades. This rethinking of the regulatory compact between the public and investor-owned utilities will ultimately transform the way we generate, manage, consume and pay for electricity. At the same time, it will enable rapid grid modernization and fuel a homegrown industry that is already larger than the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry.