New Mexico Senator Tom Udall (D) has made a big splash with his first bill: a Renewable Electricity Standard calling for the nation’s utilities to draw 25% of their power from renewable sources by the year 2025. The first benchmark would be 6% renewable power by 2012, increasing sharply thereafter.
In 2002, Udall and his cousin Mark Udall (D-CO), both members of the House at the time, worked on a bipartisan initiative that five years later won approval in the House. The two freshman Senators are now joining forces with a senior legislator, New Mexico’s Senator Jeff Bingaman.
If passed, such an RES would enliven the renewable energy credit (REC) trade in this country vastly, since there’s bound to be some utilities who will need to fill a gap between their actual renewable energy production and their mandated goal by purchasing RECs elsewhere. And a solid RES would put the US finally on more equal footing with many European countries’ renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and positioning the federal government as an aid to states’ efforts to work towards a clean energy future–rather than the hindrance it has been at times so far.
Having to live up to an RES would put pressure on state utilities to offer incentives to encourage more home and business owners to pursue solar installations. When utilities offer such incentives, they have to get something and out of the deal: and what they usually get out of it is ownership of the RECs produced by your system (even if you have a small home solar panel installation of 2kw, say, its output is bundled with the output of many other small systems into packages of 1mw–sold as a single SREC). Many states do already offer great incentives, but many more offer few or none. Find out how your state fares with our interactive solar incentive map.
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