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If the measures are passed with anything close to their current form, it will mark the first major climate laws in the country. Most notably, it includes the Clean Electric Performance Program (read our previous comment), which uses payments and penalties to encourage utilities to increase their share of electricity from carbon-free sources. Here).

Other speakers on the panel, Cleaning the Power Sectorprovided advice on the creation of this program. including them Leah Stokesan associate professor focusing on energy and climate policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Jesse JenkinsAn assistant professor and energy systems researcher at Princeton University, Dr.

During the session, they argued that legislation designed to ensure 80% of the country’s electricity comes from clean sources by 2030 is more effective and politically feasible than competing approaches, including carbon taxes favored by many economists.

“When we say to people, ‘We’re going to make it more expensive for you to use energy, which is a basic good,’ it’s not very popular,” Stokes said. “This theory of political change has been confronted with the reality of income inequality in this country.”

“The different paradigm is to say, ‘Instead of making fossil fuels more expensive to use, let’s help make clean fuel cheaper to use,'” he added.

But it is not yet clear whether and in what form the clean electricity measure and other climate provisions will pass. Even some Democratic senators in the narrowly divided Congress pushed back what they show as overspending on bills.

Despite all the progress on climate issues, well-funded and politically influential utilities and fossil fuel interests continue to hamper efforts to overhaul energy systems at the speed and scale needed, he stressed. Julian Brave Noise Makervice president of policy and strategy at Data for Progress, who moderated the session.