New York Advances Consideration Of "Clean Energy Standard"; Impact on ESCOs Still Unclear

The New York PSC formally acted yesterday to commence consideration of a new Clean Energy Standard, which is to achieve the governor's goal that 50% of the state's electricity be sourced from "non-emitting" resources (which is defined to include nuclear).

Potential impacts on ESCOs (previously detailed by RetailEnergyX.com here) remain unclear, but a Staff whitepaper on the clean energy standard to be released in the coming days will preliminarily address such issues, including:

• Structure and operation of the retail energy market

• Methods to determine the nature of the obligation of the mandate

• Methods to achieve and enforce compliance with the mandate

• Equitable allocation of the obligations and costs of the CES mandate on all classes of consumers, particularly low income customers

The Clean Energy Standard will be examined in Case 15-E-0302, which had previously been investigating the procurement of large scale renewables. In that case, a NYSERDA report previously concluded that the "preferred" mechanism for promoting large-scale renewable (LSR) development in New York is an open-source solicitation using a state entity as soliciting entity and the electric distribution companies as the PPA buyer or project owner, though other mechanisms were also reviewed (click here for story)