WASHINGTON — Congress is all but abandoning President Barack Obama’s goal of producing fully one-quarter of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources — wind, solar and the like — by 2025, though a push for at least some increase is making headway.
Both the House and Senate are considering legislation that would establish the first national requirement for electric utilities to generate a certain percentage of their power from renewable energy — from wind turbines and solar cells to biomass and geothermal sources.
To gain wider congressional support, the proposals have been whittled back. They now pale in comparison to what Obama repeatedly has maintained is feasible and necessary to shift the nation away from coal and other fossil fuels and to clean energy sources. This shift, he argues, is needed to combat climate change and make the nation more energy independent.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is expected today to approve energy measures that call for 15 percent of the country’s power to come from renewable sources by 2021. A huge climate bill, likely to be considered in the coming weeks in the House, would require 20 percent renewable energy use by 2020.
Nothing near that amount will actually be achieved by the mandate — or even required — because of compromises made to exempt some utilities and allow others to substitute efficiency improvements for a large chunk of the renewable energy requirement.
By contrast, Obama — both in the presidential campaign and since occupying the White House — has called for a much more aggressive shift to renewable energy. He set a goal of 10 percent renewable energy use by power producers by 2012 and 25 percent by 2025.
The bills before Congress would require a modest 3 to 6 percent renewable energy use by most utilities over the next three years. Currently, total U.S. renewable energy use for power generation is about 3 percent, not counting hydroelectric power.
Meanwhile, House Republicans, many of whom opposed a federal electricity mandate, offered an alternative energy plan Wednesday that would create a fund to be used to spur investment in renewable energy. The fund would use money from expanded offshore oil and gas development. The GOP plan also calls for building 100 new nuclear power plants over the next 20 years.
