National Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) | House Status
H.R. 890
Update: For the second time in as many years, the House of Representatives passed an RES. Nominally a 20% by 2020 standard, the RES was part of a comprehensive climate and energy bill, H.R. 2454 and called the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), which was introduced by Representatives Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). ACES was passed the Energy and Commerce Committee in late May and was passed by the full House on June 26th. The RES provision requires covered utilities to generate or buy 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources, or energy efficiency. Under the RES in ACES, utilities may achieve one-fourth (5 percent of the total) of this requirement through gains in energy efficiency and governors may petition for an additional 3 percent in energy efficiency, effectively lowering the renewable requirement to 12 percent. UCS analysis shows that this level of renewable energy would not be significantly greater than the level achieved through state RES provisions and renewable energy development under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus package) passed in February, 2009. UCS and our coalition will be working to strengthen ACES and the RES when it moves to the Senate.
H.R. 890—the renewable electricity standard (RES) bill—sponsored by Edward Markey (D-MA) and Todd Platts (R-PA), will require utilities to generate or buy 25 percent clean, renewable energy by 2025. The bill would create a large and growing market for clean and truly renewable sources of energy, such as solar, wind, geothermal (energy from the heat in the planet’s interior), and biomass (energy from plant materials and animal waste).
Department of Energy and Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) analyses show that a 25 percent RES will:
- Save consumers $2 billion on cumulative electricity and natural gas bills through 2030; and
- Create more than one hundred thousand new jobs.
In 2007, the House passed an RES bill that was blocked by the Senate. That bill called for a 15 percent renewable standard by 2020, with a compromise provision that would have allowed utilities to meet a portion of the standard by implementing energy efficiency programs instead of generating renewable energy. This provision effectively reduced the RES to an 11 percent standard. While UCS supports energy efficiency as a way to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, the leading source of global warming pollution, energy efficiency should not be pursued at the expense of generating new sources of renewable energy.
To this end, UCS supports the stand-alone energy efficiency resource standard (EERS) that Representative Markey also introduced. This bill, along with the 25 percent by 2025 RES, will have an even greater impact by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, saving families money on their utility bills, and creating jobs to help lift our economy out of recession.
