Press Release

Reconciliation and the Clean Electricity Performance Program

President Biden’s American Jobs Plan and the administration’s nationally determined contribution under the Paris Climate agreement call for carbon pollution-free electricity production by 2035. In a new analysis, Director of Energy Policy Ewelina Czapla considers the challenges to pass the president’s emissions-target mandates through budget reconciliation. Czapla also looks at the potential costs and effectiveness of the mandates.

Key points:

  • The Biden Administration’s clean electricity standard (CES) is a set of mandated targets that ultimately remove greenhouse gas emissions from power generation by 2035.
  • The CES could not be passed in a budgetary reconciliation bill; as a result, the reconciliation bill now carries the same clean electricity goals in a new package—the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP).
  • While the CEPP will likely be deemed non-budgetary and excluded, it also could result in payments of as much as $14 billion annually to utilities while failing to secure additional clean electricity generation.

Read the analysis

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