Jeff Bingaman: “This portfolio standard we have offered is a flexible, market-driven approach to achieving all of the goals I have…”

“This portfolio standard we have offered is a flexible, market-driven approach to achieving all of the goals I have enunciated here and to do so at a negligible cost to consumers. The proposal would require retail sellers of electricity who sell more than 4 million megawatt hours per year to provide 15 percent of that electricity from renewable sources by the year 2020. The requirement would be ramped up. There would be an increase in the requirement each year, in 3-year increments to allow planning flexibility for those utilities. The Secretary of Energy would be required to develop a system of credit for renewable generation that could be traded or sold, again making the program easier to comply with. Utilities could use new or existing generation to comply with the program or they could comply with the program by buying credits from someone who has produced more renewable energy than they were required to produce. New renewable producers could receive the credits to trade or to sell. Let me just summarize at this point and interject. The way we have drafted this, the flexibility is that an electric utility can comply with the requirement--the requirement being to ensure that 15 percent of the electricity they sell comes from renewable sources--in any of four ways: First, they can produce the electricity themselves. They could put in a wind farm or a biomass facility or whatever and produce that energy from renewable sources themselves.”