Moderate Republicans should support a clean electricity standard

Who are the leading protectors of environmental health? It’s often not who you think. The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, the most successful environmental law in history, would never have happened without leadership from moderate Republicans in the Senate.

Where would the wind energy industry be today without Republican Sen. Grassley of Iowa? I was there when Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger established the first goal to reduce climate pollution in California. I was there when New York Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, decided to establish a renewable portfolio standard, a forerunner of the currently proposed Clean Energy Standard (CES) (to achieve 80 percent of our country’s power from emission-free sources by 2030). And today I hope to see moderate Republicans support a CES as part of the infrastructure package.

I grew up going to Republican clam bakes, pasting campaign stickers on car bumpers for kindly and dignified county “Freeholder” candidates. Though he grumbled about it, my dad, a local Republican official, helped establish the first secondary sewer treatment system for our village, to protect the ocean and beach. This was many years before New York City’s West Side accomplished the same. Hunters, mostly rural conservatives, did much to preserve habitat and protect waterfowl and song birds along our nation’s flyways. Conservatives were an early and lasting power behind our local, state and national parks. 

Today, the nation must decide what to do about climate and air pollution. It seems like an easy choice. A study the UC-Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy released last week shows that a Clean Electricity Standard and other policies to expand wind and solar generation and batteries will prevent 90,000 premature deaths and reduce national climate pollution by 40 percent. The cost? Electric rates do not increase, since the cost of the clean technologies is lower than conventional fossil generation.

The benefits of this policy will be widespread across red and blue states. Renewable energy and battery technology are now cheap enough to produce energy and jobs in every state and region of this country. A Clean Energy Standard would increase net full-time employment by 500,000 to 1 million jobs and secure a fully reliable electric power system. We can do this even as we meet new power demands from electric cars and trucks, a gradual change that will produce huge savings for consumers and further increase employment. 

Would all this happen on its own without regulation? Maybe eventually, but these changes would not happen in time to help recover economically from the pandemic, stabilize the global climate or improve public health. 

Data shows it would be a popular choice. Large majorities — including many Republican voters — support increased investment in renewable energy, improved air quality and sensible actions to prevent climate change. Recent polling shows 71 percent of voters across the political spectrum support requiring utilities to generate 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2035. 

It does not mean we are finished with traditional sources of electric power. We need to keep our nuclear and large hydro capacity. Most of the gas power plant fleet would remain in service for the next 20 years, it would just operate less. The last phase of fossil fuel in America must be to help communities and workers make a solid transition to other forms of employment and prosperity.  

The United Mine Workers’ support for President Biden’s Infrastructure plan hinges on a wide range of measures to rebuild the economy of coal field communities.  Investors are waking up to the fact that oil and gas companies lose money on most new wells and that the industry often fails to properly plug wells and reclaim drilling sites. The writing is on the wall. There is 20 years of employment ahead just to clean up the mess, and it won’t cost much to restore the lands, towns and people that have suffered from extraction.  

Of course, this transition will not be easy. It was not easy to keep sewage out of waters and poisons from the air. Technology had to be invented, large sums expended over decades, new industries created, and that work is still incomplete. Yet, who today would say that it was wrong?

My dad voted for Richard Nixon. But today, under these circumstances, he would vote for a Clean Energy Standard.

David Wooley is a lecturer at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy and executive director of the Center for Environmental Public Policy.