Report to lay groundwork for Bingaman’s ‘clean energy standard’

The Energy Department’s statistical arm is slated to release a report next month that will lay the groundwork for legislation requiring that a portion of the country’s electricity be generated from low-carbon energy sources.

While President Obama and some top Democrats in Congress have advocated for the policy, which is known as a “clean energy standard,” the legislation faces major hurdles in Congress. Many Republicans, as well as some Democrats from coal states, have criticized the policy, arguing it unfairly advantages renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

But Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), a longtime advocate of the policy, is nonetheless working to develop clean energy standard legislation.

“I have concerns that the free market by itself will not drive us to greater diversity in the energy sector,” Bingaman said during a speech at the American Gas Association on Wednesday. “I believe we should try to put in place a simple and transparent framework policy that moves us in that direction. I would envision a clean energy standard as a transparent and straightforward policy.”

Bingaman in August requested that the Energy Information Administration, an independent arm of the Energy Department, analyze eight scenarios for structuring a clean energy standard. In his speech Wednesday, Bingaman said EIA will release a report on its findings in early November that will lay the groundwork for legislation.

But Bingaman acknowledged that the legislation likely doesn’t have enough support to pass both the House and the Senate.

“It’s hard to see how we get the votes to pass it,” Bingaman told reporters. “I think my effort has been to try to be sure that we do the best job we can of getting a clean energy standard designed in a way that would be good policy. We’ve taken pains to do that. That’s why we haven’t rushed to introduce a bill.”

The political hurdles facing the bill should not prevent committee staff from crafting legislation, Bingaman said.

“I think it would be very difficult to get it through both houses,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t introduce it and talk about it and let people respond to it.”

A committee staffer said Bingaman asked EIA to model various scenarios in order to better understand how the policy should be designed, including which energy sources should included, the overall cost and the potential emissions reductions.

“The idea of having it be very comprehensive is something that was important to us,” the staffer said. “For all that we’ve thought of this, there are probably things that we haven’t thought of.”

President Obama called on Congress earlier this year to pass a clean energy standard requiring that power companies generate 80 percent of the country’s electricity from low-carbon sources like wind, solar, natural gas and nuclear.

Bingaman has been working closely with the White House and committee ranking member Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on developing legislation. But Murkowski has raised objections to a clean energy standard, arguing that it should replace climate change regulations.

In two letters to the EIA in August and September, Bingaman requested that the agency analyze a clean energy standard similar to the one that Obama proposed earlier this year. The proposal would require that 80 percent of the country's electricity come from low-carbon sources by 2035. That percentage would ramp up to 95 percent by 2050.