The day Nevada lawmakers began deliberating a measure to boost renewable energy in the state, lobbyists with Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) were armed with some tantalizing information. E2 — a national, nonpartisan advocacy group — released a report April 4 showing jobs associated with clean energy in Nevada grew 32 percent during the previous year, the largest increase in the country. Lawmakers hopped on board. The bill, which requires half of Nevada’s energy to come from renewable sources by 2030, passed both legislative chambers unanimously less than a month later.
“We happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right message,” said Susan Nedell, Mountain West advocate for E2. “It might have kind of sealed the deal … to help convince folks that this is good for the economy and for the environment.”
What happened in Nevada echoes a regional trend. Amid growing public support and favorable economics, New Mexico and Washington lawmakers enacted requirements for 100 percent clean energy by 2045. Oregon is on the cusp of a cap-and-trade bill, and Colorado has codified a major utility’s plan to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. California established its own renewable requirement in 2018. With the precipitous drop in the price of clean energy — solar and wind are, in many cases, cost-competitive with coal and natural gas — these bills aren’t bold gestures as much as easy and sensible moves.
“More and more people want renewable energy, so the standards are popular because folks want to be able to turn on their lights and not feel like they’re contributing to global warming,” said Greg Wetstone, CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy. “[States are] taking charge and saying, We want to know the electricity we provide is helping to reduce pollution and protect our climate.”
And, as in Nevada, there are jobs to be had. Nationwide, the clean-energy sector employed more than 3.26 million people — compared with 1.17 million in fossil fuels — and grew 3.6 percent in 2018, according to E2. The group included energy-efficiency jobs in its count, thus swelling the “clean” sector, but the figures nonetheless indicate growth potential, which is especially high in sunny and windy Western states. The National Conference of State Legislatures credits state requirements with half the uptick in renewable energy generation in the U.S. since 2000 — and lawmakers, after a busy 2019 session, have likely goosed clean-energy growth even further.
These commitments come as federal leadership on addressing climate change has dropped off. “Part of what’s driving this current trend is the fact that the feds have pretty much vacated the field,” said Steve Michel, deputy director of the clean energy program at Western Resource Advocates. After President Donald Trump repealed the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s proposed restrictions on carbon emissions, states have picked up the effort. Even power companies jumped on board — Xcel Energy (a major Colorado utility), the Public Service Company of New Mexico, and Idaho Power have announced plans to transition to carbon-free energy.
In addition to renewables, the bills leave the door open for alternatives like nuclear, or fossil fuels equipped with carbon capture and sequestration. Reaching a fully renewable grid will require technological advances, both in the generation and storage of intermittent power sources like wind and solar. But a 2016 Department of Energy report laid out a scenario in which utility-scale solar and wind could provide up to 62 percent of U.S. electricity by 2050 (fossil fuels are responsible for 63.5 percent of electricity today), and the recent spate of renewable mandates — 29 states now have some version of one — will only accelerate that transition.
“At the end of the day, we really need to decarbonize our economy,” Michel said. “That’s the real, overwhelming issue to addressing climate change.”
Massive growth in solar and wind power over recent decades has corresponded with plummeting prices. Twenty years ago, solar power cost about 30 cents per kilowatt hour; it’s now one-tenth that — often competitive with natural gas, and cheaper than coal. In April, electricity produced by renewables eclipsed that generated from coal for the first time in history. That trend will only continue, says Patrick Cummins, senior policy advisor with the Center for the New Energy Economy (CNEE) at Colorado State University.
One reason is timing. These new clean-energy bills align with the retirement of many coal-fired power plants in the West. Even before the new clean-power standards, 45 percent of Western coal capacity was expected to cease operations by 2030, according to CNEE; Cummins estimates that 90 percent of coal-fired capacity will age out by 2050. This means states and utilities need to plan for a post-coal future. Colorado and New Mexico are taking the risk to coal towns seriously — legislation in both states includes measures for helping with the transition.
“There is no doubt that there’s going to be some pain felt in some communities around the West, but there’s also no doubt that there are going to be some tremendous opportunities economically,” Cummins said.
Experts say interstate collaboration — the West is broken up into numerous grids operated by various utilities — and an independent, third-party operator to control the transmission system could quicken the pace of decarbonizing the Western energy grid. But the cumulative state-by-state effort, whether guided by laws or market forces, already represents a massive stride toward heading off a climate crisis.
“That’s not to say that a federal program isn’t the preferred way to go,” said Michel, with Western Resource Advocates, “but it’s not the only way.”
