Advanced Energy Perspectives

North Carolina has built a strong foundation of clean energy policies that date back almost 10 years, but they’ve been under attack during this year’s legislative session. Things came to a head with a controversial vote regarding the state’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS) that was taken right before the Memorial Day weekend. Sen. Bob Rucho (R-Mecklenburg), one of the three co-chairmen of the Senate Finance Committee, declared a bill freezing the REPS at the current level (HB332) passed on a voice vote, despite a loud chorus of “no’s,” after refusing to allow an individual tally of committee members’ votes.

Does your state have a renewable portfolio standard or an energy efficiency resource standard? Have your electric utilities had their revenue decoupled from volume of electricity sales? How do your state’s policies stack up with the rest of the country? Do you even know what these policies mean?

AEE now has everything you need to know about key state energy policies. It’s all on PowerPortal, your one-stop shop for high-value information on key energy sector participants, utility programs and energy data in each state. See this alongside other data already in the PowerPortal, including utility structures, schedules for key renewable energy and energy efficiency proceedings, time varying rates programs, and much, much more! PowerPortal is part of AEE’s PowerSuite. Sign up for a free trial here.

In the meantime, here are 10 tidbits on Renewable Portfolio Standards, Energy Efficiency Resource Standards and revenue decoupling to get you started! 

Florida is hot right now, and we don’t mean the temperature. It ranks second in the country for retail electricity sales per household; it is the third most populous state and has the fourth largest economy; and has the fifth largest projected population growth rate between 2010 and 2014. That adds up to a huge opportunity for advanced energy in the Sunshine State – where it is already a $6.2 billion industry, bigger than the $4.2 billion generated by agricultural exports in 2014. That was the message that AEE took to Florida earlier this month, armed with a report prepared by Navigant Research showing just how big an economic force advanced energy is in the state. 

In one of the most hopeful moments in years for advanced energy, the major forces in California politics – Governor Jerry Brown, leaders of the Senate and Assembly, labor, the environmental community, and advanced energy businesses – are coming together to extend the state’s landmark greenhouse gas reduction law, AB 32, which expires in 2020. That law calls for the state’s GHG emissions to be reduced to 1990 levels. With that goal clearly within reach, the question became: what’s next? In his inaugural address in January, Gov. Brown called for new targets: reducing GHG levels to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. It is behind these goals that California’s political stars now seem to be aligned.

In 2014, the Ohio legislature passed SB 310, which instituted a two-year freeze on the state’s advanced energy programs. In addition to hitting the pause button on energy efficiency and renewable energy investment in the state, the legislation also formed an Energy Mandates Study Committee that is tasked with examining the state’s energy policy and making recommendations on the fate of these requirements. But the real question for Ohio is not about mandates established in the past, or the lack of them now. Rather, the question is about Ohio’s energy future.

A new report, prepared for our state partner Ohio Advanced Energy Economy by the Analysis Group, looks at different scenarios the state could consider to meet its energy needs and provides a way to evaluate those strategies. Ohio has a choice between several options that utilize advanced energy technologies, all of which have positive characteristics, and one – propping up old, inefficient power plants with contracts that put ratepayers on the hook for above-market prices – that has the fewest pluses and the most minuses.