Tailoring renewable portfolio standards to achieve disparate economic and environmental goals
Abstract
Within the United States, Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) programs have become
a popular public policy initiative for states to enact in order to encourage the use
of renewable resources for meeting state energy demand. As more states have adopted
RPS programs, the design of these programs have grown more varied and complex as states
seek to increase the benefits and decrease the costs of RPS programs by tailoring
program design to suit the interests and characteristics of a state.
The purpose of this Masters Project is to create a primer for policymakers, interested
in designing new, or amending existing, RPS programs, to better understand the policy
design options available when developing an RPS program, the potential impacts of
structuring an RPS program in a particular manner, and the current best practices
and national trends in designing RPS programs. My report uses best practice RPS design
principles, created by Wiser et al. in 2003, to evaluate the positive and negative
impacts RPS component options have on each principle.
The use of an energy-based compliance requirement, unbundled renewable energy certificates
(RECs), REC banking, true-up periods, and clearly defined financial penalties for
non-compliance are necessary components for the optimal performance of any state RPS
program. The goals emphasized by different RPS programs and state-specific characteristics
dictate the additional RPS components needed to complete the optimal RPS design for
a state. Of the RPS design options analyzed, most have positive impacts on some best
practice principles while having negative impacts on others. As a result, it is important
for policymakers to clearly define the relative importance of different policy goals
that an RPS program aims to achieve in order to select the appropriate RPS component
options.
Type
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/851Citation
Martin, Garrett (2008). Tailoring renewable portfolio standards to achieve disparate economic and environmental
goals. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/851.Collections
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