Let’s Make This Clean Energy Marriage (and Fossil Fuel Divorce) Work
When states adopt commitments to use clean energy it often has the celebratory air of a new marriage. But making good on those commitments and leaving fossil fuels behind also requires a messy divorce from longstanding legal frameworks.
In all of the states that have committed to transitioning to clean energy — and away from fossil fuels — the laws embodying the new commitment generally don’t repeal other, older laws that enable or even encourage consumers to continue getting their energy from fossil fuels.
For instance, in New York, the provision of gas service by utilities remains, according to state law, “in the public interest.” Colorado and California are home to growing oil and gas extraction industries, which those states regulate but still have no firm plans to wind down. And Massachusetts continues to haggle over whether and how localities should be permitted to prevent new buildings (not existing ones) from being designed to rely on fossil fueled equipment and appliances.
The regulatory uncertainty resulting from these conflicting commitments creates big problems for anyone trying to make decisions about long-term energy-related investments. Consumers, businesses, home and building owners, and even counties and cities, might jump into the clean energy transition with both feet if conflicting laws and policies didn’t muddle the picture.
In energy policy, as in marriage, making new commitments is easier than untangling old ones. We’ve relied on fossil fuels for over a century, so, in most places, jobs, transportation, household budgets, and even physical safety depend on access to fossil-based energy. This creates a strong political imperative to protect access to fossil fuels and shield consumers and businesses from sharp price changes — even in states that have inscribed in law their commitments to supplant fossil fuels with clean alternatives.
Nevertheless, in several states, legislative and regulatory efforts to undo the tangle of laws, regulations, and institutions that bind people to fossil fuels have begun. Last year, Colorado and Washington State adopted legislative packages that cut, amended, and added to existing law to shift key sectors onto paths aimed at clean energy transition. Among other things, Washington State reoriented its utility law to focus on “energy services” instead of “natural gas and electric services.” In New York, a bill just introduced last month would lay a solid foundation for the state’s utility commission to lead a managed, equitable transition away from reliance on gas in buildings. And in Vermont, legislators are working on a Clean Heat Standard like the one now in force in Colorado.
From these examples and others, some patterns — and important lessons — have started to emerge.
This divorce won’t happen overnight.
Focusing on the energy used in buildings for space heating, water heating, and cooking helps to illustrate the point: furnaces and boilers last 15 to 25 years, gas stoves about 15 years. Even if state policy provides financial encouragement for residential and commercial tenants to replace their gas-fired furnaces, water heaters, and stoves with electric heat pumps and induction cooktops, swapping out all of the fossil-fueled equipment in a suburban subdivision or multifamily building — or whole city block — is not likely to happen in less than a decade. And until all the homes or units electrify, the gas main and at least some of the service lines that link them to the wider gas distribution system will continue operating.
So, interim steps are inevitable, but it’s critical that they not impede the overall trajectory toward clean energy.
During the years we will spend moving from a fossil-fueled system to a clean one, progress will sometimes involve mothballing or decommissioning fossil-fueled facilities, but also sometimes involve investing in infrastructure that delivers fossil fuels to make it more efficient and to ensure that it remains safe to use. Striking the right balance between continuing to deliver energy safely and reliably while swiftly winding down outmoded, polluting channels of energy delivery will require strategic planning and diligent oversight.
All this means that state legislatures have more work to do.
If regulators are to help consumers and businesses strike the necessary balance between keeping energy accessible and shifting to clean energy sources at pace, they must have clarification from legislators on several key questions. For instance: Which old laws will persist and which are to be amended or repealed? What energy resources should be considered “clean” and how much proof of commercial viability is required for a given technology or resource to pass regulatory muster? Can regulators reject proposals for new polluting facilities or infrastructure built to deliver fossil-fueled energy as inconsistent with the law?
Turning the answers to these questions into legislation and getting that legislation passed requires expertise and fortitude. Incumbent industries know the relevant legal arcana better than most, and will be motivated to oppose or at least water down bills that drive steady change. Politicians will need to persevere through opposition and indifference to convey to voters why this sort of fight over increments of implementation is crucial for seeing the clean energy transition through.
The examples noted above vary in their openness to unproven technological fixes and the level of discretion they leave to regulators. But they all remove doubt — in large part by cleaning up confusing old laws — about the future of fossil fuels. That, and nothing less, is how states can see their commitments to clean energy through.
