Vox: The most effective clean energy policy gets the least love - In defense of renewable energy mandates

By David Roberts, Vox. 

Back in the 1990s and 2000s, when Democrats had more power in state governments, 29 states (and DC) passed some form of renewable portfolio standard (RPS), a policy that requires a state’s utilities to get a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources by a certain year. 

Standards range from California’s wildly ambitious 50-percent-by-2030 to Ohio’s modest12.5-percent-by-2026, and everywhere in between.

Though they aren’t as sexy as perpetually-discussed-but-rarely-passed carbon taxes, and they are flawed and insufficient in a number of ways, RPSs have been the quiet workhorses of renewable energy deployment in the US. According to one Lawrence Berkeley Lab report, fully 62 percent of the growth in US non-hydro renewables since 2000 has been undertaken to satisfy RPS requirements.

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