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America’s EPA plans for renewable energy are too modest

EPA Clean Power Plan Underestimates Power of Renewable Energy to Reduce Carbon Emissions, Union of Concerned Scientists,October 14, 2014     Steve Clemmer, director of energy research, Clean Energy UCS released a new analysis today showing that strengthening the contribution from renewable energy can significantly increase the emissions reductions from the EPA’s 2014 Clean Power Plan. We found that increasing non-hydro renewable energy sources from about 6 percent of U.S. electricity sales today to 23 percent by 2030—or nearly twice as much renewable energy as the EPA proposed—could raise the reductions in U.S. power plant carbon emissions from the EPA’s estimated 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 to 40 percent. We also found that increasing renewables to these levels is affordable, resulting in little impact on electricity prices and lowering natural gas prices for both utilities and consumers.

The EPA’s renewable energy targets are modest

To establish emission rate reduction targets for each state, the EPA proposed four “building blocks” to identify cost-effective ways to reduce emissions from existing power plants. In addition to increasing renewable energy, these building blocks included improving efficiency at existing coal plants, fuel switching from coal to natural gas, increasing energy efficiency in homes and business, and including the generation from new and “at-risk” nuclear power plants. Importantly, the EPA gives the states flexibility in deciding how much of each building block to include, with some limitations.

Unfortunately, the EPA’s proposed approach for renewables — based on averaging the 2020 targets of existing state renewable electricity standards (RES) within each of six regions nationwide — resulted in very modest targets. Our analysis shows that the EPA’s targets include less renewable energy than what the Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects will occur by 2020 under a business as usual scenario (i.e. without the carbon rule), and only slightly more by 2030 (Figure 1).

The EPA’s proposed approach also produced several counter-intuitive results at the state level. For example,seven states had less renewable generation in 2030 under EPA’s targets than they have today. And 17 of the 29 states with RESs have lower targets under the EPA’s approach than what is required to meet their existing laws. The EPA’s approach also does not capture any of the recent or projected growth in renewables between 2012 and 2017…….http://blog.ucsusa.org/epa-clean-power-plan-underestimates-power-of-renewable-energy-to-reduce-carbon-emissions-682

October 15, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable, USA