It is a smorgasbord for the coal, oil and nuclear industries, while providing only table scraps for energy efficiency and renewable energy. The plan downplays the potential of both energy efficiency and renewable energy, because otherwise it would be obvious there is no need for building more coal and nuclear power plants or opening up sensitive public lands to oil and gas drilling. The plan also fails to note the analysis by five national laboratories documenting how most of the need for additional generating capacity could be eliminated by a set of energy efficiency and renewable energy policies. Thus the plan makes selective use of data in an attempt to create the perception of a dire need for more coal and nuclear plants. Instead, our goal should be maximizing demand-side efficiency and rapidly ramping up renewable electricity production, so that we can retire the older dirty coal plants that don't have to meet current Clean Air Act standards.
Clean coal is an oxymoron, especially when it comes to global warming.
Wind power, for example, has come down in price from 40 cents per kilowatt-hour two decades ago to a range of 4 to 6 cents today. New geothermal plants can be developed at a cost of 3 to 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Biomass power ranges in cost from 2.5 to 7.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, and the cost of solar photovoltaic power, while still higher than these other sources, has fallen by 90 percent since the early 1970s. These should include net metering and interconnection standards for renewable technologies, and a renewable portfolio standard that would require electricity suppliers to produce an increasing share of their power from renewable resources. By contrast, state utility regulators and legislators are already acting.