State Clean Energy Practices: Renewable Portfolio Standards

The State Clean Energy Policies Analysis (SCEPA) project is supported by the Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program within the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. This project seeks to quantify the impacts of existing state policies, and to identify crucial policy attributes and their potential applicability to other states. The goal is to assist statesin determining which clean energy policies or policy portfolios will best accomplish their environmental, economic, and security goals. For example, a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) mandates an increase in the use of wind, solar, biomass, and other alternatives to fossil and nuclear electric generation. This paper provides a summary of the policy objectives that commonly drive theestablishment of an RPS, the key issues that states have encountered in implementing an RPS, and the strategies that some of the leading states have followed to address implementation challenges. The factors that help an RPS function best generally have been explored in other analyses. This study complements others by comparing empirical outcomes, and identifying the policies that appear to havethe greatest impact on results.