With renewable portfolio standards on the books in half the states and the District of Columbia, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has issued a status report on policy designs and compliance.
The first in what will be a regular series, the report fills a significant gap, compiling in a single document data from each state where an RPS, both voluntary and mandatory, has been adopted.
Key findings include:
- Forty-six percent of nationwide retail electricity sales will be covered by the mandatory state RPS policies established through the end of 2007, once these programs are fully implemented.
- Resource eligibility in state RPS programs has expanded beyond traditional renewables, with three states now allowing demand-side energy efficiency to meet at least a portion of their RPS requirement.
- Though not an ideal metric, over 50% of the non-hydro renewable capacity additions in the U.S. from 1998 through 2007 occurred in states with RPS programs (~8,900 MW); 93% of these additions came from wind power, 4% from biomass, 2% from solar, and 1% from geothermal.
- Assuming that full compliance is achieved, current mandatory state RPS policies will require the addition of roughly 60 gigawatts (GW) of new renewables capacity by 2025, equivalent to 4.7% of projected 2025 electricity generation in the U.S., and 15% of projected electricity demand growth.
- The electricity rate increases associated with existing state RPS policies, for those states in which such impacts are readily calculable, generally equal 1% or less so far; in several states, the renewable electricity required by these policies appears to be priced competitively with fossil generation.
- States are increasingly recognizing lack of transmission investment as a key barrier to achieving RPS targets, and at least five states – Texas, Colorado, California, Minnesota, and New Mexico – took important steps in 2007 to mitigate this barrier.
For more information, see the full report.