Hill Heat

An independent analysis of the CLEAN Future Act (H.R. 1512) finds that its provisions intended to phase out fossil-fueled electricity production by 2035 are dangerously flawed.

The so-called Clean Electricity Standard in Title II of the legislation establishes a cap-and-trade system of “zero-emission electricity” tradable credits for electricity generators. The cap of allowances for greenhouse-pollution-emitting electricity declines until 2035, when all electricity is meant to be “zero-emission,” a definition which encompasses renewable and nuclear energy.

In “Review of the Credit Trading System in Title II of the CLEAN Future Act,” Bruce Buckheit, a former director of the EPA Air Enforcement Division, finds that the system “is flawed to the point that it is unlikely to achieve zero emission electricity from the power sector by 2035.”

Specifically:

The CLEAN Future Act draft (dCFA) defers any serious disincentives for gas-fired generation until 2031 and then hopes to replace all of the growing gas-fired electric generating unit (EGU) fleet with renewable energy (RE) over a short 4-year period. This is not feasible and sets itself up for failure.

The starting baseline for “Zero Emission Electricity” (ZEE) requirements is based on the 2017-2019 generating mix. This ignores ongoing retirements of coal plants and RE capacity that is under construction today and will be online in 2023. The consequence is a large initial surplus of ZEE, disincentivizing necessary early investment in non-fossil fuel energy.

He expects that “gas-reliant regions, such as the Northeast U.S., might not have to take any significant action until 2031.”

Furthermore, Buckheit finds that the legislation as written doesn’t even require “zero-emission” electricity, but instead “permits generation at less than 0.4 mt (882 lb) CO2e/MWh.”

He also notes that, given regulatory timelines, the “trading system cannot begin to operate in 2023 as the draft bill contemplates.”

Read the full report.

A broad coalition is asking the U.S. Congress to ensure any clean electricity standard (CES) passed into law be a renewable standard, which includes only renewable resources, particularly solar and wind energy, and excludes natural gas, biomass, and new nuclear plants.

Major signatories to the letter to Democratic congressional leaders include 350.org, Indigenous Environmental Network, the NAACP, Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, the Center for Biological Diversity, Food & Water Watch, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, National Family Farm Coalition, Mothers Out Front, GreenLatinos, Greenpeace, Labor Network for Sustainability, Stand.Earth, California Environmental Justice Alliance, Oil Change International and The Democracy Collaborative.

The letter addresses provisions in the text of the Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation’s (CLEAN) Future Act (H.R. 1512), which admits gas and carbon capture and storage as qualifying energies. The letter cites an analysis of the CLEAN Future Act’s CES credit-trading system, which finds that the bill offers “little incentive for operators with a full mix of generation to replace gas with renewable energy until 2035, since they get a much better benefit from retiring coal.”

The signatories write:

The definition [of clean energy] must exclude all fossil fuels and false solutions, including but not limited to: gas with and without carbon capture and storage and other fossil-based technologies; waste incineration and other combustion-based technologies; bioenergy including biomass, biofuels, factory farm gas, landfill gas, and wood pellets; new nuclear; and new, large-scale and ecosystem-altering hydropower, and all market-based accounting systems like offsets. Energy efficiency and demand-side management technologies must also be paired with renewable energies to vastly reduce energy consumption.

Writing for Politico, Michael Grunwald criticized the signatories as a “circular firing squad” of “utopian” “eco-purists” engaging in “political lunacy.” The only named critic of the letter he quoted was Data For Progress’s Julian Brave Noisecat (“There’s just no reason to take positions that aren’t politically defensible in Congress, and probably aren’t even technically defensible”).

Politico not only accepts advertising and sponsorship from corporate polluters but also collaborates with them on lobbying events.

Robinson Meyer, a journalist at the Atlantic, was similarly dismissive. Like Politico, the Atlantic collaborates with the fossil-fuel industry on lobbying and propaganda.

Text of the letter: