Full Title: Achieving 100% Clean Electricity in the Southeast: Enacting a Federal Clean Electricity Standard
Author(s): Maggie Shober, Heather Pohnan, Forest Bradley-Wright, Bryan Jacob
Publisher(s): Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
Publication Date: June 14, 2021
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
“Achieving 100% Clean Electricity in the Southeast: Enacting a Federal Clean Electricity Standard, developed by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), lays out multiple pathways for some of the biggest utility systems in the nation to achieve 100% clean electricity.
As SACE’s recent “Tracking Decarbonization in the Southeast” 2021 report notes, Duke Energy, Southern Company, NextEra, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, are not on track to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2035, or even 2050. This lack of decarbonization effort falls far short of the Biden Administration’s goal of decarbonizing the nation’s electric grid by 2035, a timeframe recommended by scientists to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Our report examines the role a federal Clean Electricity Standard (CES) can play in ensuring major Southeast utilities can reach net-zero carbon emissions sooner. SACE staff will present pathways that represent an aggressive build-out of clean electricity resources like distributed solar, energy efficiency, demand response, and wind. Each pathway meets high-level tests to ensure it would provide adequate power throughout the year based on actual hourly peak data.