Pennsylvania’s renewable energy mandate is finally facing a constitutional test. In a lawsuit filed September 3, West Virginia argues that Pennsylvania’s requirement that many qualifying renewable generators be located within the state violates a basic principle of interstate commerce: states cannot rig markets to favor their own businesses. The case highlights a broader problem with renewable energy mandates: their high cost.
Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia mandate that electric utilities purchase increasing percentages of their customers’ electricity from specific types of ‘green’ generating resources. Qualifying suppliers are issued renewable energy credits, or RECs, which utilities must purchase. Utilities then pass the costs on to consumers.
Most RECs come from wind and solar generation, but some states, including Pennsylvania, allow other resources, such as waste coal and burning garbage. Moreover, solar RECs are often carved out into their own category, called SRECs.
The rationales for the mandates have spanned everything from fighting climate change and reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil to promoting economic development and “green” jobs. While none has accomplished those goals, they have all increased electricity costs by forcing electric utilities to purchase increasing quantities of RECs and SRECs. Over the six-year period, 2020–2025, U.S. electric ratepayers paid almost $45 billion more for their electricity. As the mandates increase, so do the annual costs. The economic damage is compounded because higher-cost electricity ripples through the entire U.S. economy, increasing costs for virtually all goods and services.
In their zeal to promote in-state economic development, several mid-Atlantic states, notably Pennsylvania, also require generation owners eligible for RECs to be physically located within their boundaries. That’s problematic for ratepayers and out-of-state suppliers, as a lawsuit West Virginia filed against Pennsylvania points out.
In 2004, when Pennsylvania enacted Act 40, its renewable energy mandate, it contained no restrictions on the physical location of qualifying generators, as long as they were within PJM, the regional grid operator that coordinates generation in 13 states and DC. But in 2017, the state amended Act 40 to restrict qualifying ‘Tier 1’ solar generators and ‘Tier II’ generators to facilities physically located within the state. The amendments made it clear that the purpose was to promote in-state economic development.
The amendments clearly promoted the well-being of in-state renewable energy developers: according to a report prepared by the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission, the prices of RECs soared from 22 cents per megawatt-hour (MWh) in 2018 to almost $27 per MWh in 2025, a more than 100-fold increase. In 2025 alone, Pennsylvania ratepayers paid over $700 million for renewable energy credits—about $55 per person.
Courts have long held that, under the Dormant Commerce Clause, states generally cannot discriminate against out-of-state economic interests to benefit in-state ones. By limiting eligibility for renewable energy credits based on physical location and explicitly citing economic development as justification, Pennsylvania has provided West Virginia ample evidence that the law discriminates against interstate commerce.
Moreover, artificially high credit prices have encouraged the development of uneconomic renewable energy, contributing to instability in PJM’s wholesale energy market and, especially, its capacity market, where prices increased by a factor of 10 over the last two years.
Pennsylvania is unlikely to be the only state to face such a challenge. New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia, have similar geographic restrictions and may soon face challenges of their own. The Pennsylvania case could mark the beginning of broader scrutiny of state renewable energy mandates that favor in state generation.
With energy affordability a heightened concern, costly renewable energy mandates make little sense, especially when geographic restrictions artificially raise prices even higher. The best solution would be to eliminate these mandates entirely. Failing that, eliminating geographic restrictions such as Pennsylvania’s would be a good first step.
Jonathan Lesser is a senior fellow with the National Center for Energy Analytics.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Moreover, artificially high credit prices have encouraged the development of uneconomic renewable energy.
“uneconomic renewable” In other words, they cost more because they consume more energy than they can produce. Prove me wrong, I’ll wait.
I know that this is a common refrain among people who are not enthusiastic about so-called renewables energy — that it cannot even supply what is needed to replace it.
I was asked a couple of years ago by a group of Wyoming State senators to examine this point. What I found is that while wind power, in particular, is nowhere near as effective as its supporters claim in producing net power, it is not a total loser.
It takes a Wyoming located wind turbine about two years, assuming an annual capacity factor of 40%, to reach net production.
Now, the amount of net power is not the only issue to consider. Owners are “repowering” plants rapidly in order to garner new tax credits, and the fact that it is unrealiable power raises its costs enormously. If we were to all eliminate thermal power and go full renewable, our power rates for the commodity itself would head toward California values –36 cents per kWhr, not including increased transmission. That’s a big problem.
Since some other source needs to provide AT LEAST 60% of the power, and likely more as the worse-than-useless intermittent wind turbines will likely overproduce when the power is not needed (AND get paid some more to “curtail” the needless production, while we’re on the subject), and dispatchable sources must be employed inefficiently to manage frequency and provide base load and backup at varying levels to make up for the massive issues of weather dependent sources that are being given priority, those additional and completely unnecessary energy expenditures should be factored into any calculation of “net production” by the worse-than-useless wind turbines.
Oh, and let’s also dispense with the notion that windy Wyoming constitutes a typical capacity factor. Most turbines will operate in areas where they are turning more like 25% of the time, not 40%.
And you didn’t even mention the elephant in the room–the difficulty in maintaining a stable grid as more and more wind and solar are providing power to the grid. Production of electricity must match demand at all times so as wind and solar vary their production the dispatchable sources must change constantly. This is both difficult but also costly for those dispatchable sources (aka fossil fuel plants in most of the country).
If one truly considers the mining, refining, manufacturing, and transport of the wind turbines and then add in the infrastructure and maintenance, it would surely be greater than two years to reach net production.
Do not forget that these turbines have a 10-12-year half-life and then become too expensive to maintain. carbon based energy source can have a 60-year life, with regular upgrades even longer. How much of the infrastructure can be reused or does more land need to be destroyed? We already had 15,000 dead, abandoned wind turbines in the US back in 2005. Imagine how many there are now.
Unreliable, non-recyclable, expensive, and short half-life. No end of life plan that I have ever heard of. What could possibly go wrong?
BTW, offshore wind is much worse in terms of weathering, infrastructure, maintenance, and half-life. Yeah, that’s the way to go. NOT.
Hmmmmm
wRECks…..
Pesky thing, the US Constitution and the Amendments. The left, including the CAGW loonies, either want to change it or load the Supreme Court to nullify it. Looks like the November mid-term elections are a USA crossroad event. Then, in two more years a maybe doomsday election?
That’s a lot of projection after the last two years and project 2025.
Ah. Good. More idiocies to laugh at you about.
The Democrats have been quite vocal in their demands to pack the Supreme Court in order to ensure that it will always vote the way the party demands.
No projection needed. Just an honest reading of the facts at hand. Something that you have never managed to do.
PS: Regarding the lies the Democrats have been screaming about Trump, those have already been dealt with. Multiple times.
Exactly right and the thugocracy axis powers of the world can’t wait for the next breakout opportunity to expand their criminal control in eastern Europe, Middle East, east Asia, Africa, and any other easy opportunities that come up.
It appears to me that the long-term effect is to destroy interstate grids. The next will be states disallowing the sharing of generation with other states, keep it at home.
So be it. Sooner or later the voters will get tired of the shenanigans and put some politicians in that understand economics.
Jim Gorman: “It appears to me that the long-term effect is to destroy interstate grids. The next will be states disallowing the sharing of generation with other states, keep it at home.”
A Jacobson Vision power grid — i.e., the wind is always blowing somewhere, the sun is always shining somewhere — requires unrestricted access to any source of renewable power generation located anywhere in the country.
It’s almost like Pennsylvania’s politicians don’t really believe that a mostly-renewable power grid will ever actually work, either for their own state or for America as a whole.
You have to consider distance. The US is much too big to have renewable power shared across the country. It is practical only so far. It used to be 50) miles.
YOU CANNOT BUILD A RELIABLE ENRGY SUPPLY FROM UNRELIABLE ENERGY SOURCES.
Even considering your typo 4 times the distance is possible.
Pure sophistry.
You are describing the length of a transmission line. 500 miles is pushing it in the U.S. due to routine storm damage causing single point failures.
Sabin probably has it closer when looking at what lies beyond a grid connection point. You need substations throughout the grid that have the ability to switch incoming power from a connection point to reach a grid point 500 miles away. That is called “practical”. You need to show some concrete examples of switching the power at a grid connection point all the way through to another point 500 miles away.
He ignores transmission line losses, too.
Pounced on the catnip. Excellent.
Another laugh.
Xcel Energy here in Colorado is pushing to get transmission interconnect between Colorado and Texas. My guess is they are a big proponent of that as the state is requiring Xcel and other utilities in the state to go NetZero and Xcel must know that it will be impossible to power our grid with just “renewable” sources so needs to be able to purchase electricity from out of state to meet demands. Instead of adding dispatchable sources they are building large solar “farms” on land that formerly were actual farmland.
Any land used for solar panels is land that will never be used for farming again. Too many heavy metals leak into the soil from panels as they age. They also lose efficiency with age, several % a year and only have about a 10-12-year half-life, just like wind power. Not to mention their susceptibility to high wind, tornadoes, and hail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics
Wiki?
No further comment needed.
Then just don’t write one and leave it to people who know how to use wikipedia.
Nothing says stoopid like an unquestioning belief in the infallible authority of others.
You noticed he did not post a comment, merely a link. 🙂
Pounced on the catnip!
Excellent. Still laughing at you.
The problem with long transmission lines is storms in that part of the U.S. Torndoes, blizzards, prairie fires. The longer the line, the higher the risk that there will be a break and there goes you power.
I’ve always believed that RECs were a significant factor in CT’s high electricity rates. Last time I checked, CT energy providers were required to purchase RECs sufficient to ‘cover’ 38% of load served. The odd thing is, random checks of NEISO’s (grid operator) web site only rarely show ‘renewables’ reaching 10% of wholesale supply, so unless I’m missing something, the whole program seems highly suspect.
We’re told that the greatest “greenhouse gas” is water vapor, yeah the “greenhouse gas” that actually only cools the atmosphere via transpiration. * Now do you see how easy it is to identify the Marxist co-option of our institutions, where the palming off of blatant lies isn’t immediately called out, identifying the “Marxist “false opposition” that pretends to be in opposition of the liars.
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* Which means water vapor derived from rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans cool the atmosphere. How is water vapor such a robust cooling molecule when it’s also a robust absorbent of thermal energy? Because of that attribute, in fact. The atmosphere is primarily composed of nitrogen and oxygen, which are anemic carriers of thermal energy. As such, when water vapor arises, it’s robust thermal absorbent property quickly expands the molecule, causing the molecule to rise (convection), which displaces downwards the cooler nitrogen and oxygen molecules, thereby cooling the area below. That’s how “greenhouse gasses” actually cool, rather than warm.
“Transpiration” is performed by plants. “Evaporation” is from the surface.
However, there is no such thing as greenhouse gases and no greenhouse effect. This is failed conjectures from Arrhenius in 1896, resurrected to serve a political agenda.
In fact, CO2 turns out to be the world’s best refrigerant, being stable, nontoxic, nonflammable, abundant, recyclable, and cheap. CO2 in the atmosphere serves to cool the atmosphere 24/7, constantly sending -80 deg C IR radiation out to space.
Spot on.
‘“Transpiration” is performed by plants. “Evaporation” is from the surface.’
Are you serious? Water vapor is water vapor regardless of its source! Unbelievable ignorance!
By the way, water vapor is used as a coolant in industrial applications.
Yes. He is serious and using concise scientific definitions.
The legal industry in the northeast is a major sector that keeps growing while most everything else, especially goods sectors, shrink.
Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators, build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators, remove all wind and solar from the grid.