Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) introduced legislation Thursday that he said would "modernize our nation's power sector and guide it toward a future in which more and more electricity is generated with cleaner and cleaner energy."
The bill, titled the Clean Energy Standard Act of 2012, "appears to be designed as a cap-and-trade scheme where credits would be allotted to generators based on their emissions," Electric Light & Power reported.
SmartGrid News said Bingaman's proposal "not only allows utilities to decide how to meet them, but also provides real incentives for compliance."
In his announcement of the legislation, Bingaman said it "employs a straightforward, market-based approach that encourages a wide variety of electricity-generating technologies."
Last year, Bingaman asked the Energy Information Administration to model clean emergy approaches, and Electric Light & Power said the bill he filed uses the results.
The modeling, EL&P reported, showed that it is possible to design clean energy standards that "would have almost zero impact on GDP growth, and little to no impact on national electricity rates for the first decade of the program."
