The Success Of New Energy Mandates

The ten-year, 73 gigawatt renewable energy business plan; Renewable portfolio standards across 29 US states represent significant, legally required additions of wind and solar – including 15 states whose requirements will drive more than 11 GWac of solar power.

John Weaver, August 26, 2019 (PV Magazine)

“Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) are laws in 29 states plus Washington DC that require utilities to source an increasing amount of the energy they generate or sell from renewable sources…[T]he majority are more than a decade old, are regularly updated by implementing states and represent more than 73 GW of new renewable capacity by 2030…Meeting these values will represent 12% of all U.S. electricity sales, which means [because there is more New Energy capacity is outside mandates] greater than 17% of all electricity will come from renewables…Texas and the Midwest have requirements of roughly 20 TWh, but are producing greater than 60 and 100 TWhs/year, respectively. The Southeast, as of the time of this report, had essentially zero requirements, but was producing almost 20 TWh/year of non-hydro renewables…

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Over the past decade, roughly 50% of the 154 GW of renewables deployed were to meet RPS standards…9 GW of RPS requirement meeting renewables have been built in non-RPS states, and wheeled into the state via power lines…The cost of these programs increased the cost of electricity by 1.8¢/kWh, and roughly $4.7 billion in 2018. These values increased from 1.5¢/kWh and $4.0 billion in 2017. This represents a weighted average of 2.6% of electricity bills…The actual capacity that will be deployed by 2030 to meet these requirements is projected to be 73 GW…[That includes 11 GWac of solar power and 10 GW of] offshore wind…” click here for more

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