Press Release
September 21, 2021
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.