The goal of the Renewable Power Program is to provide decision-makers objective nonpartisan information about market opportunities that will drive down the cost of renewable power technologies and remove barriers to their deployment. The primary policy focus is a renewable electricity standard (RES), which requires utilities to get an increasing share of their power from renewables. We also work in a number of areas that complement RES policy, for example transmission policy reform, solar power, and outreach to the agricultural community.

Renewable Electricity Standard Update:

Federal climate and energy legislation is still under discussion in the Senate. For renewables, the main policies on the table are a national renewable electricity standard, transmission policy reforms, and incentives for domestic manufacturing of renewable energy equipment.

State interest in renewable power policy is continuing. Wisconsin, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Colorado are considering increases to existing state RPS laws, while Indiana, Virginia, and Florida are debating new standards. In 2009, Maine, Nevada, and New Jersey expanded their RPS goals, with Kansas adopting a new standard. Oregon, California, Vermont and Maine regulators are writing rules to implement their states' new feed-in tariff legislation.

Transmission Update:

A number of green transmission proposals are moving ahead, including actual construction of lines in California and Texas to benefit wind power. Minnesota regulators approved the CapX 2020 project, with the condition that only wind be allowed on one of the three lines. The Southwest Power Pool approved a "balanced energy plan" that greenlighted construction of $700 million worth of lines in Oklahoma and Kansas for new wind. The Bonneville Power Administration and the Western Area Power Administration used stimulus funds to develop new lines in the Northwest and Interior West: Bonneville is going ahead with the McNary-John Day line, which will deliver more than 700 MW of wind energy, while WAPA is supporting the Montana-Alberta project, which will deliver as much as 600 MW of wind energy. NV Energy, WAPA, and LS Power announced a financing agreement for a portion of the Southwest Intertie Project. When complete, the corridor will deliver 2000 MW of wind, geothermal, and solar power in Nevada and the Southwest.

DOE awarded $60 million to support regional planning exercises in the Eastern, Western and Texas interconnections. The primary recipients were regional transmission planning organizations for technical work matched with state regulators for policy guidance.

Solar Update:

The Interstate Renewable Energy Council, Vote Solar Initiative, and the Network for New Energy Choices collaborated to release "Freeing the Grid", a report card summarizing and evaluating progress on interconnection and net metering. The report highlights include 27 states that now have effective net metering policies (up from 13 states in 2007) and 15 that have interconnection standards (up from 1 in 2007).

The financing model for solar pioneered by the City of Berkeley, called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), is gaining momentum across the country. PACE programs, now allowed by law in sixteen states, allow homeowners to finance solar systems on their property tax bill. The latest state to come on board, New York, adopted the policy in November.

In January, New Jersey adopted a policy likely to maintain their position as the nation's second largest distributed solar market (after California). The state adopted a plan to generate more than 2000 GWh of solar power by 2020 and to install more than 5GW of solar capacity by 2026.

Financial Update:

In response to the meltdown in financial markets, and its impact on the use of the federal tax credits for renewables, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) created a new grant program in lieu of the production and investment tax credits. The grants can cover up to 30 percent of a new project, and were scored at $13 billion. The program is expected to be highly beneficial to community wind projects.

Congress recently expanded funding for USDA's Rural Energy for America Program from $23 to $100 million through the normal appropriations process.

Public Power Update:

The stimulus bill tripled funding for the Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs), a federal financing tool for public power, from $800 million to $2.4 billion. The CREBs program has already put out $1.2 billion in bonds, supporting 912 mostly small renewables projects by municipal utilities, cooperatives, and government agencies.