President Biden’s American Jobs Plan has put the United States on an aggressive path toward a clean electricity standard (CES) that, at least for the moment, is ambitious in scope and vague in the particulars. The administration would require electric utilities to incorporate specified amounts of solar or wind and cleaner fuels in their energy portfolios and increase those sources over time, correspondingly decreasing dirtier fuels, to achieve “100 percent carbon-pollution free electricity by 2035.”
That’s one of the details that politicos, environmentalists, and infrastructure cognoscenti are now eagerly picking apart. The purposeful vagueness of the proposal doesn’t really tamp down objections in a Congress drowning in discord, and it also raises a host of other questions: What are the interim goals along the way to Biden’s 2035? Eighty percent by 2030? Will there be tax or other financial incentives right off the bat? Will utilities that fail to meet the CES standard have to pay a penalty? And what does “clean” even mean?
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