How Does It Work?

A Clean Electricity Standard requires the utilities that generate and sell electricity to meet ambitious clean energy targets by ramping up the percentage of carbon-free power sources in their portfolio over time until they reach 100% clean.

There are myriad ways to design a federal CES to rapidly decarbonize the power sector and center equity, good jobs, and community benefits — including multiple pathways to pass one via reconciliation. Evergreen and Data for Progress detailed 3 potential options for federal CES policies optimized for passage through budget reconciliation in a report released earlier this year.

The AJP also includes several proposals that, alongside a federal CES, will be key to accelerating America’s clean energy transition. Strong labor standards for jobs in the clean energy economy, clean energy tax incentives turned into direct-pay grants, half a million new electric vehicle charging stations, and targeting at least 40% of the benefits of new clean energy and infrastructure investments to historically disadvantaged communities will all be critical to delivering on President Biden’s commitment to build back better as we transition to a clean energy economy.

Proven, Popular, and Practical

Thanks to leadership at the state level, we know that CES policies work to propel new clean energy generation, create jobs, and drive down costs for consumers — and the polling shows these policies are popular with the overwhelming majority of voters. Now, we can build on that success by enacting a federal CES.

Proven

30 states, Washington DC, and three U.S. territories have already implemented CES-like policies that require utilities to increase their use of renewable or carbon-free electricity and 16 of those states have committed to 100% carbon pollution-free power. States that have enacted some version of these policies have helped grow clean energy industries that now employ over three million Americans — more than three times more than work in fossil fuel industries.

Popular

Polling from Data for Progress earlier this year found that two-thirds of likely voters support transforming the nation’s power grid by 2035 to reduce pollution and address the climate crisis, including an overwhelming majority of Democrats (86 percent), a majority of independents (60 percent), and 40 percent of Republicans. Those findings are consistent with polling last year from the Yale Program on Climate Communication that found 66% of registered voters “support requiring electric utilities to produce 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources by the year 2035.”

Data for Progress polling found that a majority of likely voters support government action moving the country to a clean energy grid by 2035, including 86% of Democrats, 60% of independents, and 40% of Republicans.