Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) published a white paper today that delineates a plan for states that fail to comply with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations when creating a state plan to enact Clean Power Plan requirements.
According to the EPA, states will be required to hit custom goals for emissions and submit plans for accomplishing those goals to the EPA. However, states that choose to not create plans will be required to follow a federal plan that will be released in draft form this summer with the final version of the regulation.
"Our paper shows that a federal plan can reduce costs for states by making full use of energy efficiency and demand response, renewable energy, and other advanced energy technologies,” AEE’s Senior Vice President of Policy Malcolm Woolf said. “Utilities, independent power producers and their parent companies are already investing in these and similar resources. Even in states that decline to develop their own implementation plans, EPA can slash compliance costs by allowing voluntary trading of emission reduction credits generated by these resources, a practice very familiar to the agency and industry."
The AEE’s plan sidesteps the legal entanglements of the Clean Power Plan dictating state policy by using its traditional jurisdiction over electric generating units and the value of advanced energy resources.
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