And what’s the goal: a share of load or a cut in carbon?
Michael R. Strong (mrstrong07@gmail.com) is the chief legal counsel at the Illinois Power Agency. The views expressed in this article are his own. They don’t represent the views of the agency, nor do they indicate future agency actions.
After more a decade of state-based, targeted incentives for renewable electricity resources, evidence is accumulating that current production-based incentives should give way to results-based incentives if our goal is to trod the most economical path for getting to green.
Almost 10 years ago, I wrote an article for these pages entitled “What Do You Mean by Green?” It described the challenges of obtaining meaningful results from a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) using an Illinois proposal as an example.1 Although the specific example in that article didn’t become law, 10 years later Illinois and virtually every other state has some sort of renewable energy mandate or incentive. On top of that, the federal production tax credit is still in force. Having had years of experience under all of these programs, it’s possible to create and implement a framework for evaluating whether the goals of the RPS and federal incentives are being met.