Passing this notice along as relevant information on US energy policy issues:
Received a notification from ASME that Sen. Jeff Bingaman is preparing a draft clean energy standard (CES) bill based on a white paper he and Sen Murkowski released earlier this year about the subject. The white paper was released shortly after Fukushima so it did not receive much column space at that time and was not on many people's radar screen.
Many changes will flow from this bill if passed but in the near future, and of importance, is the ordering of the technologies discussed in the white paper as well as the accompanying report from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), the successor to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP).
As both the report and the white paper indicate, nuclear is third in ranking of the various options behind natural gas combined cycle generation and fossil fuel generation with carbon capture and storage (CCS) but ahead of the generic category of renewables. Another critical issue to be discussed if this bill makes it to the floor is the issue of credits or partial credits for efficient natural gas and clean coal as well as possibly excluding energy efficiency measures from any credit system as discussed in the white paper.
The more generic "clean energy standard" will move the US government away from the legally mandated renewable energy portfolio (REP) mindset implemented at the state level. From this aspect, a clean energy standard is much better in my viewpoint since most state REP's legally restrict utilities to wind, solar or small scale natural gas combined cycle generation to meet their RPS mandates.
Regards,
Bill Rodgers
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