Index: RPS Georgia Aff Novice Packet

RPS Georgia
Aff novice packet

Index
Index............................................................................................................................................................................................................1
Explanation..................................................................................................................................................................................................2
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Inh – No renewable now............................................................................................................................................................................18
Inh – A2 states solving now.......................................................................................................................................................................19
Environment – RPS decreases coal use.....................................................................................................................................................20
Environment – Renewables conserve water..............................................................................................................................................21
Environment – Fossil Fuels hurt the Environment....................................................................................................................................22
Environment – Air Pollution Ext...............................................................................................................................................................23
Environment – Acid rain Ext.....................................................................................................................................................................24
Environment – Renewables solve..............................................................................................................................................................25
Cmptvns – US falling behind.....................................................................................................................................................................26
Cmptvns – RPS boosts competitiveness....................................................................................................................................................27
Cmptvns – Renewables key to exports......................................................................................................................................................28
Cmptvns – Key to US heg.........................................................................................................................................................................29
Cmptvns – A2 other countries producing..................................................................................................................................................30
Solvency – RPS awesome..........................................................................................................................................................................31
Solvency – RPS awesome..........................................................................................................................................................................32
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Explanation
An RPS is a renewable portfolio standard. The aff requires that all electricity producers produce at least 20% of their energy from
alternative energy sources by 2020. So, for example, in the status quo there is no requirement so Georgia Power [the major power
provider in the US] can sell 1million kilowatts of energy and all 1 millions can be produced from coal. However, post plan of the
1 million kilowatts that Georgia power sells at least 200,000 [or 20%] must come from an alternative energy source.
The plan also allows for a renewable energy credit. A credit means that a company that produces more than 20% from alternative
energy can sell their excess to another company in order to help them meet their goal. So, if Georgia Power [in the scenario
above] produces 500,000 kilowatts from alternative energy then they can sell a credit to Alabama Power for 300,000 kilowatts
allowing them to also meet their goal. This provides an incentive for companies to make innovations very early within the
timeframe allowed.
The first advantage is just a basic environment advantage based off of the reasons why fossil fuels are bad for the environment.
The claim is that the plan causes a shift to renewable which undermines all of the environmental harm being done by fossil fuels in
the status quo.
The second advantage is a competitiveness advantage. The claim is that the US is falling behind the rest of the world because we
don’t have renewable energy technologies to sell to others and this is a major new market emerging around the world. There is
also the underlying belief that US products are less attractive because they are believed to be worse for the environment since they
were not produced with alternative energy. The plan – by shifting to alternative energy and making technology production more
profitable – allows the US economy to keep up with other markets around the world and sustain the US economy. The impact is
that a global economic decline would cause wars that would destroy the planet.
Lots of literature on this affirmative and it is an excellent choice for a team that expects to get better throughout the year because
the advantages can be fully developed and expanded easily with some more research.
Thoughts on new advantages –

1. US/European relations
2. US technological leadership
3. independent reasons why fossil fuels are bad for the environment or other things.
4. US/Chinese cooperation over energy sources.
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CONTENTION ONE - INHERENCY
Individuals States are adopting renewable portfolio standards – creating an uncertain regulatory environment for investors
and fueling market distortions. Only a federal RPS can create a diverse, predictable and stable national renewable market
Dr. Sovacool, & Cooper, 7 – *Senior Research Fellow for the Network for New Energy Choices in New York and Adjunct
Assistant Professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University in Blacksburg, VA and ** Executive Director of the
Network for New Energy Choices
(Benjamin K. Sovacool, also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Asia and Globalization at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public
Policy and Christopher Cooper, Electricity Journal, “Big Is Beautiful: The Case for Federal Leadership on a National Renewable
Portfolio Standard,” May 2007, vol. 48, no. 4, Lexis-Nexis Academic) // JMP
State-based renewable portfolio standards (RPS) create regulatory uncertainty for investors and inherent inequities among
ratepayers. Ultimately, federal legislation can help create a more just, diverse and predictable national market for renewable
resources without significantly increasing aggregate electricity prices.
"There are times when we are 50 states and there are times when we're one country and have national needs. And the way I know
this is that Florida did not fight Germany in World War II or establish civil rights." - (the fictional) President Josiah Bartlett, The
West Wing
Arguably, we face no greater national priority than crafting a coherent national energy strategy. Americans face energy challenges
over the next several decades - growing dependence on foreign sources of fuel, continued exposure to the threat of terrorist
sabotage,1 increasing vulnerability to impending climate change, and environmental threats - that demand progressive federal
leadership. Yet federal legislation to establish a national renewable portfolio standard (RPS) has failed no less than 17 times in the
past 10 years.
While supporting state-based RPS efforts, the Bush Administration has officially opposed a national RPS on the grounds that it
would create "winners" and "losers" among regions of the country and increase electricity prices in places where renewable
resources are less abundant or harder to cultivate.2 In the meantime, 21 states (and the District of Columbia) have adopted their
own RPS mandates, and eight others - Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia - are
considering some form of RPS.
With so much state-level action, one might be tempted to agree with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association
(NRECA) that "activities on a number of fronts supplant the need for a federal RPS."3 But looks can be deceiving. Because the
accumulated demand for electricity is expected to accelerate over the next several decades, the penetration of renewable energy
technologies in individual states, while noteworthy, is not likely to substantially alter the national fuel mix nor materially address
the energy risks we all face.
Framing the debate as a choice between a perfectly functioning, undistorted energy market and a clunky, artificial federal
intervention, opponents of a national RPS tend to ignore the unique drawbacks associated with a complex web of state-based
mandates.4 Indeed, the most compelling argument for federal action is that a national RPS may help correct many of the market
distortions brought about by a patchwork of inconsistent state actions. Not only does reliance on state-based action make for an
uncertain regulatory environment for potential investors, it creates inherent inequities between ratepayers in some states that are
paying for "free riders" in others. Ultimately, federal legislation can help create a more just, more diverse and more predictable
national market for renewable resources without significantly increasing aggregate electricity prices. A national RPS may help
correct many of the market distortions brought about by a patchwork of inconsistent state actions.
PLAN –
The Unites States federal government should require that retail power providers meet at least 20 percent of electricity
demand with alternative energy by 2020 and establish renewable energy credits to facilitate this goal.
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CONTENTION TWO – HARMS
ADVANTAGE ONE – the environment
Conventional energy sources results in thousands of systemic deaths – outweighs the one-shot risk of their disad
Dr. Sovacool, 8 – Senior Research Fellow for the Network for New Energy Choices in New York and Adjunct Assistant Professor
at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University in Blacksburg, VA
(Benjamin K., also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Asia and Globalization at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, “The
Costs of Major Energy Accidents, 1907 to 2007,” 4-29-2008,
www.scitizen.com/stories/Future-Energies/2008/04/The-Costs-of-Major-Energy-Accidents-1907-to-2007/) // JMP
Conventional energy technologies-- namely nuclear, coal, oil, gas, and hydroelectric power generators-- may kill more people than
you think.
From 1907 to 2007, a new study finds that 279 major energy accidents in the coal, oil, natural gas, hydroelectric, and nuclear
sectors have been responsible for $41 billion in damages and 182,156 deaths.
The claim that humans are imperfect needs no further citation. It is unsurprising, then, that major energy accidents occur. But what counts as an energy “accident,”
especially a “major” one?
The study attempted to answer this question by searching historical archives, newspaper and magazine articles, and press wire reports from 1907 to 2007. The
words “energy,” “electricity,” “oil,” “coal,” “natural gas,” “nuclear,” “renewable,” and “hydroelectric” were searched in the same sentence as the words “accident,”
“disaster,” “incident,” “failure,” “meltdown,” “explosion,” “spill,” and “leak.” The study then narrowed results according to five criteria:
The accident must have involved an energy system at the production/generation, transmission, and distribution phase. This means it must have occurred at an oil,
coal, natural gas, nuclear, renewable, or hydroelectric plant, its associated infrastructure, or within its fuel cycle (mine, refinery, pipeline, enrichment facility, etc.);
It must have resulted in at least one death or property damage above $50,000 (in constant dollars that has not been normalized for growth in capital stock);
It had to be unintentional and in the civilian sector, meaning that military accidents and events during war and conflict are not covered, nor are intentional attacks.
The study only counted documented cases of accident and failure;
It had to occur between August, 1907 and August, 2007;
It had to be verified by a published source;
The study adjusted all damages—including destruction of property, emergency response, environmental remediation, evacuation, lost product, fines, and court
claims—to 2006 U.S. dollars using the Statistical Abstracts of the United States.
Unsurprisingly, the data concerning major energy accidents is inhomogeneous. While responsible for less than 1 percent of total energy accidents, hydroelectric
facilities claimed 94 percent of reported fatalities. Looking at the gathered data, the total results on fatalities are highly dominated one accident in which the
Shimantan Dam failed in 1975 and 171,000 people perished.
Only three of the listed 279 accidents resulted in more than 1,000 deaths, and each of these varied in almost every aspect. One involved the structural failure of a
dam more than 30 years ago in China; one involved a nuclear meltdown in the Ukraine two decades ago; and one involved the rupture of a petroleum pipeline in
Nigeria around ten years ago.
The study found that only a small amount of accidents caused property damages greater than $1 billion, with most accidents below the $100 million mark. The
second largest source of fatalities, nuclear reactors, is also the second most capital intense, supporting the notion that the larger a facility the more grave (albeit
rare) the consequences of its failure. The inverse seems true for oil, natural gas, and coal systems: they fail far more frequently, but have comparatively fewer
deaths and damage per each instance of failure.
While hydroelectric plants were responsible for the most fatalities, nuclear plants rank first in terms of their economic cost, accounting for 41 percent of all
property damage. Oil and hydroelectric come next at around 25 percent each, followed by natural gas at 9 percent and coal at 2 percent.
By energy source, the most frequent energy system to fail is natural gas, followed by oil, nuclear, coal, and then hydroelectric. Ninety-one accidents occurred at
natural gas facilities, accounting for 33 percent of the total; oil, 71 accidents at 25 percent; nuclear, 63 accidents at 23 percent; coal, 51 accidents at 18 percent;
hydroelectric, 3 accidents at 1 percent.
Therefore, energy accidents exact a significant toll on human health and welfare, the natural environment, and society. Such accidents
are now part of our daily routines, a somewhat intractable feature of our energy-intensive lifestyles. They are an often-ignored negative externality associated with
energy conversion and use. This conclusion may seem quite banal to some, given how fully integrated energy technologies are into modern society. Yet energy
systems continue to fail despite drastic improvements in design, construction, operation, and maintenance, as well as the best of
intentions among policymakers and operators.
Perhaps one striking difference between energy accidents and other “normal” risks facing society concerns the involuntary aspects
of energy accidents. Alcoholics, rock climbers, construction workers, soldiers, and gigolos all take a somewhat active and voluntary role in their risky
behavior. Those suffering from nuclear meltdowns, exploding gas clouds, and petroleum-contaminated water do not.
The death and destruction associated with large-scale energy technologies is significant. Tallied as a whole, the 182,156 energy-
related deaths total more than twice the number that died in the Vietnam War. Indeed, if averaged out for each year, energy
technologies have been responsible for the equivalent of a September 11, 2001 happening every 1.65 years, year after year.
The fact that such deaths are systemic means that they can be predicted to occur, with certainty, well into the future. Therein also
lies hope, for recurring events can be anticipated and responded to. Their “high probability” means that they can be more easily
predicted, planned for, and minimized than unforeseen and catastrophic events.
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In particular, a federal RPS is key to prevent water shortages and thermal pollution that will collapse ecosystems
Policy and Christopher Cooper, Renewing America: The Case for Federal Leadership on a National Renewable Portfolio Standard
(RPS), Network for New Energy Choices • Report No. 01-07, June, 2007,
http://www.newenergychoices.org/dev/uploads/RPS%20Report_Cooper_Sovacool_FINAL_HILL.pdf) // JMP
B. Water Conservation
If projected electricity demand is met using water-intensive fossil fuel and nuclear reactors, America will soon be withdrawing more water for electricity production than for
farming. Perhaps the
most important—and least discussed—advantage to a federal RPS is its ability to displace electricity generation that is
extremely water-intensive. The nation’s oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear facilities consume about 3.3 billion gallons of water each day.244 In 2006, they accounted for almost
40 percent of all freshwater withdrawals (water diverted or withdrawn from a surface- or ground-water source), roughly equivalent to all the water withdrawals for irrigated agriculture in
the entire United States.245
A conventional 500 MW coal plant, for instance, consumes around 7,000 gallons of water per minute, or the equivalent of 17
Olympic-sized swimming pools every day.246 Older, less efficient plants can be much worse. In Georgia, the 3,400 MW Sherer coal facility consumes as much as 9,913
gallons of water for every MWh of electricity it generates. 247 Data from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) also confirms that every type of traditional power plant consumes
and withdraws vast amounts of water. Conventional power plants use thousands of gallons of water for the condensing portion of their thermodynamic cycle. Coal plants also use water to
clean and process fuel, and all traditional plants lose water through evaporative loss.
Newer technologies, while they withdraw less water, actually consume more. Advanced power plant systems that rely on re-circulating, closed-loop cooling technology
convert more water to steam that is vented to the atmosphere. Closed-loop systems also rely on greater amounts of water for cleaning and therefore return less water to the original source.
Thus, while modern power plants may reduce water withdrawals by up to 10 percent, they contribute even more to the nation’s water scarcity.248
Nuclear reactors, in particular, require massive supplies of water to cool reactor cores and spent nuclear fuel rods. Because much of the water is turned to steam, substantial amounts are
lost to the local water table entirely. One nuclear plant in Georgia, for example, withdraws an average of 57 million gallons every day from the Altamaha River, but actually “consumes”
(primarily as lost water vapor) 33 million gallons per day from the local supply, enough to service more than 196,000 Georgia homes,.249
With electricity demand expected to grow by approximately 50 percent in the next 25 years, continuing
to rely on fossil fuel-fired and nuclear generators could
spark a water scarcity crisis. In 2006, the Department of Energy warned that consumption of water for electricity production could more than double by 2030, to 7.3 billion
gallons per day, if new power plants continue to be built with evaporative cooling. This staggering amount is equal to the entire country’s water consumption in 1995.250
Water Shortages
The electric utility industry’s vast appetite for water has serious consequences, both for human consumption and the environment. Assuming the
latest Census Bureau projections, the U.S. population is expected to grow by about 70 million people in the next 25 years.251 Such population growth is already threatening to overwhelm
existing supplies of fresh and potable water.
Few new reservoirs have been built since 1980 and some regions have seen groundwater levels drop as much as 300 to 900 feet over the past 50 years as aquifers extract water faster than
the natural rate of replenishment.252 Most state water managers expect either local or regional water shortages within the next 10 years, according to a recent survey, even under
“normal” conditions.253 In fact, 47 states in the country reported drought conditions during the summer of 2002.254
Water shortages risk becoming more acute in the coming years as climate change alters precipitation patterns. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, global warming is expected to induce
a dramatic loss of snow-pack as more precipitation falls as rain. As a result, numerous studies have suggested that the hydrology of the region will be fundamentally altered with increased
flood risks in the spring and reductions of snow in the winter. 255 Consequently, power retailers in the region have expressed concern that large hydroelectric and nuclear facilities
will have to be shut down due to lack of adequate water for electricity generation and cooling.256 During the steamy August of 2006, the record heat sparked unplanned reactor shutdowns
in Michigan and Minnesota as nuclear plant operators scrambled to find enough water to cool radioactive fuel cores.257
Thermal Pollution
The Argonne National Laboratory has documented how
power plants have withdrawn hundreds of millions of gallons of water each day for
cooling purposes and then discharged the heated water back to the same or a nearby water body. This process of “once-through” cooling
presents potential environmental impacts by impinging aquatic organisms in intake screens and by affecting aquatic ecosystems by discharge effluent that is far hotter than the surrounding
surface waters.259 Drawing water into a plant often kills fish and other aquatic organisms, and the extensive array of cooling towers,
ponds, and underwater vents used by most plants have been documented to severely damage riparian environments.
In some cases, the thermal pollution from centralized power plants can induce eutrophication—a process where the warmer
temperature alters the chemical composition of the water, resulting in a rapid increase of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous. Rather than improving
the ecosystem, such alterations usually promote excessive plant growth and decay, favoring certain weedy species over others and
severely reducing water quality. In riparian environments, the enhanced growth of choking vegetation can collapse entire
ecosystems. This form of thermal pollution has been known to decrease the aesthetic and recreational value of rivers, lakes, and estuaries and complicate drinking water
treatment.260 // pg. 97-100
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This causes extinction
Coyne and Hoekstra, 07 - *professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago AND **
Associate Professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University (Jerry and Hopi, The New
Republic, “The Greatest Dying,” 9/24, http://www.truthout.org/article/jerry-coyne-and-hopi-e-hoekstra-the-greatest-dying)
Aside from the Great Dying, there have been four other mass extinctions, all of which severely pruned life's diversity. Scientists agree that we're now in the midst of a sixth such episode. This new one, however, is
We are relentlessly taking over the planet,
different - and, in many ways, much worse. For, unlike earlier extinctions, this one results from the work of a single species, Homo sapiens.
laying it to waste and eliminating most of our fellow species. Moreover, we're doing it much faster than the mass extinctions that
came before. Every year, up to 30,000 species disappear due to human activity alone. At this rate, we could lose half of Earth's
species in this century. And, unlike with previous extinctions, there's no hope that biodiversity will ever recover, since the cause of
the decimation - us - is here to stay.
To scientists, this is an unparalleled calamity, far more severe than global warming, which is, after all, only one of many threats to biodiversity. Yet global warming gets far more press. Why? One reason is that, while
the increase in temperature is easy to document, the decrease of species is not. Biologists don't know, for example, exactly how many species exist on Earth. Estimates range widely, from three million to more than 50
million, and that doesn't count microbes, critical (albeit invisible) components of ecosystems. We're not certain about the rate of extinction, either; how could we be, since the vast majority of species have yet to be
described? We're even less sure how the loss of some species will affect the ecosystems in which they're embedded, since the intricate connection between organisms means that the loss of a single species can ramify
unpredictably.
But we do know some things. Tropical rainforests are disappearing at a rate of 2 percent per year. Populations of most large fish are down to only 10 percent of what they were in 1950. Many primates and all the great
apes - our closest relatives - are nearly gone from the wild.
And we know that extinction and global warming act synergistically. Extinction exacerbates global warming: By burning rainforests, we're not only polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide (a major greenhouse
gas) but destroying the very plants that can remove this gas from the air. Conversely, global warming increases extinction, both directly (killing corals) and indirectly (destroying the habitats of Arctic and Antarctic
animals). As extinction increases, then, so does global warming, which in turn causes more extinction - and so on, into a downward spiral of destruction.
Why, exactly, should we care? Let's start with the most celebrated case: the rainforests. Their loss will worsen global warming - raising temperatures, melting icecaps, and flooding coastal cities. And, as the forest
habitat shrinks, so begins the inevitable contact between organisms that have not evolved together, a scenario played out many times, and one that is never good. Dreadful diseases have successfully jumped species
boundaries, with humans as prime recipients. We have gotten aids from apes, sars from civets, and Ebola from fruit bats. Additional worldwide plagues from unknown microbes are a very real possibility.
But it isn't just the destruction of the rainforests that should trouble us. Healthy ecosystems the world over provide hidden services like waste disposal,
nutrient cycling, soil formation, water purification, and oxygen production. Such services are best rendered by ecosystems that are diverse. Yet, through both intention
and accident, humans have introduced exotic species that turn biodiversity into monoculture. Fast-growing zebra mussels, for example, have outcompeted more than 15 species of native mussels in North America's
Great Lakes and have damaged harbors and water-treatment plants. Native prairies are becoming dominated by single species (often genetically homogenous) of corn or wheat. Thanks to these developments, soils will
with increased pollution and runoff, as well as reduced
erode and become unproductive - which, along with temperature change, will diminish agricultural yields. Meanwhile,
forest cover, ecosystems will no longer be able to purify water; and a shortage of clean water spells disaster.
In many ways, oceans are the most vulnerable areas of all. As overfishing eliminates major predators, while polluted and
warming waters kill off phytoplankton, the intricate aquatic food web could collapse from both sides. Fish, on which so many humans depend, will be
a fond memory. As phytoplankton vanish, so does the ability of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. (Half of the oxygen we breathe is made by phytoplankton, with the rest coming from land
plants.) Species extinction is also imperiling coral reefs - a major problem since these reefs have far more than recreational value: They provide tremendous amounts of food for human populations and buffer coastlines
against erosion.
In fact, the global value of "hidden" services provided by ecosystems - those services, like waste disposal, that aren't bought and sold in the marketplace - has been estimated to be as much as $50 trillion per year,
roughly equal to the gross domestic product of all countries combined. And that doesn't include tangible goods like fish and timber. Life as we know it would be impossible if
ecosystems collapsed. Yet that is where we're heading if species extinction continues at its current pace.
Extinction also has a huge impact on medicine. Who really cares if, say, a worm in the remote swamps of French Guiana goes extinct? Well, those who suffer from cardiovascular disease. The recent discovery of a
rare South American leech has led to the isolation of a powerful enzyme that, unlike other anticoagulants, not only prevents blood from clotting but also dissolves existing clots. And it's not just this one species of worm:
Its wriggly relatives have evolved other biomedically valuable proteins, including antistatin (a potential anticancer agent), decorsin and ornatin (platelet aggregation inhibitors), and hirudin (another anticoagulant).
Plants, too, are pharmaceutical gold mines. The bark of trees, for example, has given us quinine (the first cure for malaria), taxol (a drug highly effective against ovarian and breast cancer), and aspirin. More than a
quarter of the medicines on our pharmacy shelves were originally derived from plants. The sap of the Madagascar periwinkle contains more than 70 useful alkaloids, including vincristine, a powerful anticancer drug that
saved the life of one of our friends.
Of the roughly 250,000 plant species on Earth, fewer than 5 percent have been screened for pharmaceutical properties. Who knows what life-saving drugs remain to be discovered? Given current extinction rates, it's
estimated that we're losing one valuable drug every two years.
Our arguments so far have tacitly assumed that species are worth saving only in proportion to their economic value and their effects on our quality of life, an attitude that is strongly ingrained, especially in Americans.
That is why conservationists always base their case on an economic calculus. But we biologists know in our hearts that there are deeper and equally compelling reasons to worry about the loss of biodiversity: namely,
simple morality and intellectual values that transcend pecuniary interests. What, for example, gives us the right to destroy other creatures? And what could be more thrilling than looking around us, seeing that we are
surrounded by our evolutionary cousins, and realizing that we all got here by the same simple process of natural selection? To biologists, and potentially everyone else, apprehending the genetic kinship and common
origin of all species is a spiritual experience - not necessarily religious, but spiritual nonetheless, for it stirs the soul.
But, whether or not one is moved by such concerns, it is certain that our future is bleak if we do nothing to stem this sixth extinction. We are creating
a world in which exotic diseases flourish but natural medicinal cures are lost; a world in which carbon waste accumulates while
food sources dwindle; a world of sweltering heat, failing crops, and impure water. In the end, we must accept the possibility that
we ourselves are not immune to extinction. Or, if we survive, perhaps only a few of us will remain, scratching out a grubby
existence on a devastated planet. Global warming will seem like a secondary problem when humanity finally faces the
consequences of what we have done to nature: not just another Great Dying, but perhaps the greatest dying of them all.
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RPS will displace natural gas and coal facilities – preventing environmental harms
6. Environment: A National RPS Conserves Water, Air & Land

A. A National RPS Displaces Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has already determined that that “the imposition of [a national] RPS would lead to lower generation from
natural gas and coal facilities.”236 Examinations of fuel generation in several states confirm this finding. The New York State Energy and
Research Development Authority (NYSERDA), for example, looked at load profiles for 2001 and concluded that 65 percent of the energy displaced by wind turbines in New York would
have otherwise come from natural gas facilities, 15 percent from coal-fired plants, 10 percent from oil-based generation, and 10 percent from out of state imports of electricity.237
A more recent study conducted in Virginia found that the electricity mandated by a state RPS would otherwise be generated with a
mix of 87 percent coal, 9 percent natural gas, and 4 percent oil.238 In Texas, the Union of Concerned Scientists also confirmed that renewable
energy technologies primarily displace natural gas and coal facilities.239
Often overlooked, is how RPS-induced renewable generation would offset nuclear power in several regions of the U.S. Researchers in North Carolina, for example, determined that a
statewide RPS would displace facilities relying on nuclear fuels and minimize the environmental impacts associated with the extraction of uranium used to fuel nuclear reactors.240 In
Oregon, the Governor’s Renewable Energy Working Group analyzed a 25 percent statewide RPS by 2025 and projected that every 50 MW of renewable energy would displace
approximately 20 MW of base-load resources, including nuclear power.241 Environment Michigan estimates that a 20 percent RPS by 2020 would displace the need for more than 640
MW of power that would have otherwise come from both nuclear and coal facilities.242 Utilities in Ontario, Canada, are deploying renewable energy systems in an attempt to displace all
coal and nuclear electricity generation in the region entirely.243
By offsetting the generation of conventional and nuclear power plants, a national RPS avoids many of the environmental and
social costs associated with the mining, processing, transportation, combustion and clean-up of fossil and nuclear fuels. // pg. 97
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ADVANTAGE TWO – Competitiveness
The global renewable market is rapidly expanding – the U.S. will miss out on this multi-billion dollar energy revolution
without strong and consistent government support for domestic renewable energy production
Sawin, 2 – Research Associate at the Worldwatch Institute

(Janet, Climate Wise, “Losing the Clean Energy Race,” 3-26- 2002, www.greenbiz.com/news/columns_third.cfm?NewsID=20066) // JMP
The United States once led - actually, began - the clean energy revolution. As recently as 1990, U.S. industries played the dominant
global role in wind and solar PV development and deployment.
But, due to a lack of appropriate and consistent government support for clean energy technologies, and government subsidies that
continue to favor dirty, conventional fuels and technologies, we are losing our role as technological leaders.
We are now falling farther and farther behind as Japan and Europe surpass us with regard to total installed clean energy generating
capacity, share of the global market, and ownership of manufacturers.
U.S. companies must compete in the global marketplace.
If this trend is not reversed, America will lose millions of potential high-wage, high-tech jobs, billions of dollars in potential
investment and revenue. The US will also fail to glean multiple benefits not traditionally measured in economic terms that come
with clean, safe, domestic and renewable energy technologies - including cleaner environment, reduced risk of global warming,
improved human health, better quality of life, and a more secure future.
With only 4.5 percent of the United States land area and a fraction of its wind resource potential, Germany has more than double
the U.S. installed wind energy capacity. Denmark, a small nation of about five million people, is the world's leading manufacturer
of wind turbines, with several turbine companies that consistently rank in the global top ten. The U.S. share of global PV
shipments reached a peak in 1996, declining from 44 percent that year to 27 percent in 2001.
Total grid-connected PV in the United States is now estimated to be only 15 percent of that in Japan, and 31 percent of that in
Germany.
The rising demand for Japanese and European made technology is due primarily to the dramatic increases in demand for
renewable energy capacity in these countries, sparked by successful government policies aimed to develop markets for renewable
energy. Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to subsidize fossil fuels and nuclear power, at levels many times that for
renewable energy technologies.
Around the world, leaders in business and government are calling for a transition to a clean energy economy to address global
climate change, increase national security and meet rising demand for energy worldwide. Perhaps most importantly, the American
public wants clean energy.
In poll after poll, Americans have expressed their preference for investment in renewable energy technologies over conventional
energy. According to a Gallup poll taken November 8, 2001, 91 percent of Americans favor investments in new sources of energy,
such as solar and wind.
Top level advisors under Clinton, Reagan and Nixon have urged Congress to adopt strong measures now to advance renewable
energy in order to advance America's energy security. "They [renewable energy technologies] are now ready to be brought, full
force, into service…. Speedy action by the Administration and the Congress is critical to establish the regulatory and tax
conditions for these renewable resources to rapidly reach their potential."
David Freeman, who has held top positions at the New York Power Authority and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and now
heads the California Power Authority, notes that "our whole system of electric
power supply is hard to defend against attack. The worst is nuclear."
Sir Mark Moody Stuart, former CEO of Shell Oil company last month called on governments of northern countries "to expand
renewable energy targets, removing inappropriate subsidies and switching some to renewable energy to provide a level playing
field in the energy sector."
Russian Vice Prime Minister Ylia Klebanov recently said that "using traditional energy technologies, it's hard to talk about [a]
competitive economy. And for renewable energy technologies we do too little…."
Every region and state in this nation has significant renewable energy potential - wind and solar energy, geothermal energy, ocean
power, crops for biomass, and environmentally sustainable hydropower. In fact, North America has some of the world's greatest
wind energy resources; North Dakota alone has enough to produce 1.2 trillion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity each year , 37
percent of total U.S. electricity consumption in 1999 (3 trillion kWh ). Every minute, the sun drenches earth's surface with more
energy than the world consumes in a year. The United States has the best solar resource of any industrialized country.
Evidence continues on the next page – no text deleted
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According to the U.S. Department of Energy, enough electricity could be generated to meet all of U.S. demand with solar energy
on a plot of land 100 miles square in Nevada. The benefits of renewable energy are compelling: a cleaner environment for current
and future generations, reduced threats of global warming, economic growth, greater diversity of fuel supply, improved energy and
national security, rapid and modular deployment, and a global potential for technology transfer and innovation.
In addition, renewable energy technologies provide more jobs per unit of energy generated than do conventional energy
technologies. According to the Department of Energy, wind energy provides about five times more jobs per dollar invested than
coal or nuclear power. A recent study concluded that solar PV provides the most jobs of any renewable technology, on an energy
capacity basis, and many of these positions are high-wage, high-tech jobs.
The global markets for renewable energy and energy efficient technologies are booming. Wind has been the fastest growing energy
source worldwide for most of the past decade, while global shipments of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and modules have
increased at an average annual rate of 33 percent since 1996.
During the same period, the use of coal for generating electricity has declined by 9 percent worldwide. Solar PV and wind power
technologies have matured considerably since the 1980s, experiencing dramatic increases in productivity and lifetime, while
achieving significant declines in cost. In good wind sites, wind power is now the cheapest new energy source, with full life-cycle
costs below those of most fossil-fuel powered plants.
Today, solar PV provides electricity for several hundred thousand people around the world, creates employment for more than ten
thousand people and generates business worth more than $2 billion annually. According to some forecasts, clean-energy markets
will grow from less than $7 billion in 2000 to more than $82 billion by 2010 , and the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory
(NREL) predicts that PV technology has "the potential to become one of the world's most important industries."
Driven by concerns about global warming, energy security, increasing demand for energy worldwide - particularly in developing
countries and advances in renewable energy technologies, nations around the world are setting targets for renewable energy. The
European Union aims to generate ten percent of its electricity with renewables by 2010, and the European Wind Energy
Association projects that Europe will have 60,000 MW of installed wind capacity by that year. By the year 2020, wind energy
could generate 10 percent of the world's electricity and create more than 1.7 million jobs. The European PV Industry Association
projects that solar PV will provide 26 percent of total global annual electricity demand by 2040.
Even China, India and Brazil have committed to significant increases in the use of renewable energy; India established a ministry
for advanced energy technologies, and China has eliminated subsidies for coal. These three nations combined have more than two
billion people, with rapidly rising demand for energy and the technologies that produce it, offering nearly unlimited market
potential.
The current political and commercial commitment to renewable energy around the world implies that the recent surge of activity in
this industry is only the beginning of a massive transformation and expansion expected to occur over the coming decades. But
without strong and sustained political leadership at home, Americans will lose out in this energy revolution. To compete
successfully in the clean energy race, U.S. industries must be strong and resilient, which requires a strong and consistent domestic
market for their products.
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The lack of a federal RPS is robbing domestic industries of valuable export opportunities and locking in U.S. inferiority in
this critical market
Fitzgerald, 6 – directs of the Law Policy and Society program at Northeastern University
(Joan, The American Prospect, “Help Wanted – Green; Green development could be a big generator of good jobs -- if America will
seize the opportunity,” 12-17-2006, http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=help_wanted_green) // JMP
There are good jobs to be had in environmentally friendly development, and construction jobs are just the beginning. Thousands of
jobs are in products that go into green buildings. The job potential in renewable energy production is even more impressive. The
Renewable Energy Policy Project estimates that producing 10 percent of the nation's electricity with renewable sources would
create 381,000 jobs producing the component parts of the systems. Already, renewable energy (biomass, solar, wind, geothermal)
employ more than 115,000 people directly. These new jobs more than compensate for ongoing job loss in the coal and oil
industries as clean forms of energy replace polluting ones.
Renewable energy is labor-intensive. It generates more jobs in construction, manufacturing, and installation per megawatt of
power than coal and natural gas. These jobs start with research and development. They produce an array of goods and services
from renewable energy itself to products made from high-tech or recycled materials. The majority of the jobs created would be in
manufacturing, although there are many in operations and maintenance and in system installation.
These jobs, often called greentech or cleantech, could provide middle-class wages for hundreds of thousands of Americans while
reducing our dependence on foreign oil and improving the environment. Producing for export could improve the balance of trade.
That's the potential. The reality is that we're falling behind other countries. Solar power was invented in the United States, but
Japan and Germany moved ahead of us in production in the late 1990s and China is not far behind. In wind power capacity, we're
behind Germany and Spain. We're also behind on enacting policies to spur the growth of cleantech industries -- and it is public
policy that drives research and development, as well as the employment that follows.
Forty-three countries have renewable portfolio standards that require a specified percentage of energy be from renewable sources
by a given year. But the U.S. Congress has failed to enact such a standard for our country. Instead, states and cities in the United
States are trying to fill the policy vacuum.
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Dominance by Europe and Japan in global renewable markets will collapse the U.S. economy – a transition to renewables
is critical to prevent this
Rynn, June 20th – frequent contributor to the Grist environmental blog and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus
(Jonathon, Asia Times, “Guns Blight US Energy Choices,” 6-20-2008,
www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JF20Dj01.html)-CMM
When New York City wanted to make the biggest purchase of subway cars in US history in the late 1990s, more than US$3 billion worth, the only companies that were able to bid on the
contract were foreign. The same problem applies to high-speed rail today: only European or Japanese companies could build any of the proposed rail networks in the United States.
The US has also ceded the high ground to Europe and Japan in a broad range of other sustainable technologies. For instance, 11
companies produce 96% of medium to large wind turbines; only one, GE, is based in the United States, with a 16% share of the global
market. The differences in market penetration come down to two factors: European and Japanese companies have become more competent producers for these markets, and their
governments have helped them to develop both this competence and the markets themselves.
Take Germany as an example. Even though the sun is not so shiny in that part of Europe, Germany has put up 88% of the photovoltaics for solar power in Europe. Partly, this was the
result of a feed-in tariff; that is, Germany guarantees that it will pay about 0.10 euro (15 US cents) per kilowatt/hour of electricity to whoever produces wind or solar electricity. The
average for electricity that is paid for nonrenewable sources is about 0.05 euro per kwh, so Germany is effectively paying double for its renewable electricity in a successful effort to
encourage its production. Every year, the guaranteed price is lowered, so that the renewable sector can eventually compete on its own, having gotten over the hump of introducing new
technology.
Germany's other advantage is that it is a world leader in manufacturing renewable technology equipment - 32% of the solar equipment manufacturers in
the world are located in Germany. In addition, almost 30% of global wind turbine manufacturing capacity is German.
In Denmark we can see the advantages of good policy plus competence in building machinery. The world's largest wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas, is Danish. According to the Earth
Policy Institute, "Denmark's 3,100 megawatts of wind capacity meet 20% of its electricity needs, the largest share in any country." The Danes have created a fascinating experiment in
democracy by building most of their wind turbines through the agency of wind cooperatives, which may be joined by individuals and families.
Spain has undertaken one of the most ambitious programs in wind, solar, and high-speed trains. The Gamesa Corporation is the second-largest wind turbine manufacturer, and Acciona
Energy is the largest wind-park developer. The Spanish government has very ambitious plans for wind production, and occasionally wind power provides as much as 30% of the country's
electrical power.
Spain is also the world's fourth-largest producer of solar energy equipment and is a leader in the development of concentrated solar power - a form of solar power obtained by using a very
large quantity of mirrors, typically, to concentrate solar rays onto a tower that produces steam, which then turns a turbine, generating electricity. They are often built in deserts and can
spread over several acres. These new solar technologies will probably result in lower-cost electricity for long-distance applications than photovoltaics.
Asia is an important producer of renewable energy and train equipment as well. As of 2006, Japan produced about 39% of the solar cells in the world
and has encouraged solar energy in Japan with subsidies for purchasing the equipment as well as generous research budgets. Japan's Shinkansen high-speed rail network covers much of
the country. China is set to take off as one of the world’s biggest producers of solar and wind equipment owing to its rise as a manufacturing nation.
Europe sets the pace
But Europe and Japan's dominance in renewable technologies is really based in a broader domain of competitive competence. They
dominate the most fundamental sector of the economy, namely the production of machinery for manufacturing industries in
general (often referred to as the mechanical engineering sector).
The European Union produces almost twice as much industrial equipment overall as the United States, according to data compiled by the EU, Japan produces almost as much as the US,
with about half the population. The split among the EU, US, and Japan, which together produce most of the world's machinery, is 52%, 27% and 21%, respectively.
A robust industrial sector is the infrastructure we need for building the tools that will help us to avert climate catastrophe. Think of
the industrial sector of an economy as an ecosystem. Instead of the grass and leaves that feed the plant-eaters that feed the meat eaters, a modern economic
ecosystem contains industrial equipment that makes production technology that creates the goods and services that people
consume.
The different niches of an economic ecosystem, such as the various machinery and equipment sectors, thrive as a self-reinforcing web of engineers, high-skill production workers,
operational managers and factories. As of 2003, Europe's manufacturing sector made up 32% of its nonfinancial economy, while the manufacturing sector of the United States comprised
only 13% of its nonfinancial sectors. The
decline of American machinery and manufacturing sectors, in conjunction with the on-again/off-
again nature of American renewable energy policy, explains why Europe and Japan are so far ahead of the United States in the
transition to a more sustainable economy.
And America's decline can be traced to one overriding factor: a military budget that comprises nearly half of the world's military spending. For decades, as the late Professor Seymour
Melman showed in many books (such as After Capitalism) and in numerous articles, the Pentagon has been draining not just money but also the engineering, scientific and business talent
that Europe and Japan have been using for civilian production. As Melman often pointed out, the US military budget is a capital fund, and American citizens can use that fund to help
finance the construction of the trains, wind and solar power, and other green technologies that will help us to avoid economic and environmental collapse.
That economiccollapse, if it comes, will be caused by two major factors: the end of the era of cheap oil, coal and natural gas; and the decline of the
manufacturing and machinery base of the economy. Both problems can be addressed simultaneously, as Europe and Japan are
showing, by moving the economy from one based on military and fossil fuel production to one based on electric transportation and the generation of
renewable electricity.
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Creating a stable domestic market for renewable will allow U.S. industries to capture large shares of the global market and
overtake competitors in Europe and Japan
Walsh & White, 8 – * national policy director for Green For All and ** senior policy associate with the Center on Wisconsin
Strategy
(Jason Walsh and Sarah White, Asia Times, “Jobs up for grabs in cleaner economy,” 5-20-2008,
www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JE20Dj07.html) // JMP
Employment opportunity
In the United States, green-collar jobs offer new opportunities for low-income and working class people who have been at the short end of persistent and increasing
inequality in this country. Despite significant boosts in worker productivity over recent decades, median wages remain stagnant. The decline in manufacturing jobs
over the past decade gathered steam with an 18% national job loss after the 2001 recession, plummeting with particularly devastating consequences in the industrial
heartland, which bore up to a third of the national job loss recorded between 2000 and 2005.
Nationally, median family income has not recovered to the pre-recession levels of 2000, and job insecurity threatens workers at all levels. This trend toward greater
inequality, wage stagnation, job loss and insecurity stems from many factors, not least economic and trade policies that have encouraged offshoring, real and
threatened, and wage triage on a global scale.
The new-energy economy will not solve all of the problems of economic inequality, environmental degradation and energy insecurity. But it can
contribute mightily to a resurgence of the American middle class and a sustainable environmental ethos. By expanding existing
industries and creating new ones, the emerging green sector can retain and create significant numbers of domestic jobs.
What are these green-collar jobs? We define the core of this sector as family-supporting, middle-skill jobs, most of them in the primary sectors of a clean-energy
economy - efficiency, renewables and alternative transportation and fuels. There are many ways to count them, none perfect. One respected source, using a broad
set of parameters, estimates that the renewable and efficiency sectors may account for as many as one in four jobs by 2030. This projection includes both the full
range of jobs in these industries - from accountants to mechanics - and those created indirectly by them. Whatever the relative merits of such approximations, even
the most modest modeling indicates that the green economy holds much promise for urban and rural revitalization.
A large part of this promise is based on the reality that green-collar jobs are community-based: because they focus on transforming the immediate natural and built
environment, they are harder, in some cases impossible, to offshore. No one will ship a building from Chicago to be retrofitted in China. The energy efficiency
industry provides perhaps the most exciting opportunity. Substantially reducing energy waste through systematic retrofitting and upgrading of residential and
commercial buildings is a key area where environmental and equity agendas can come together to create good jobs in plentiful numbers. The work requires a multi-
skilled, local workforce, and it feeds a building-materials industry that is still largely domestic.
Make no mistake: we are talking about a lot of jobs here. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority estimates that for every gigawatt hour
saved, the agency's programs create or retain 1.5 jobs. A recent report for the American Solar Energy society counts eight million jobs created in the US energy
efficiency industry in 2006 alone (3.7 million directly in efficiency).
Building-trades jobs are not the only green-collar occupations resistant to offshoring. The manufacturing sector, which has borne the brunt of job
losses in this country could receive a marked job creation boost from a substantial shift to renewable energy. The Renewable Energy
Policy Project has published a series of reports identifying the potential for states with existing industrial infrastructure and skilled labor to become component
manufacturing leaders for the wind industry.
If the country can muster the US$62 billion investment required to expand wind capacity by 125,000MW over the next 10 years - the amount needed to stabilize
US carbon emissions - the wind energy sector could create nearly 400,000 domestic manufacturing jobs. And the top 20 states that stand to
benefit are some of the most populous and hardest hit by recent manufacturing job loss. California and Texas lead the list, followed by the Great Lakes states: New
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Industrial capacity and transportation networks are key assets to turbine production. Wind turbines are massive and extremely heavy machines. The towers alone
are up to 250 feet tall, 16 feet in diameter and weigh more than 100 tons. An assembled nacelle - the fiberglass case that sits on top of the tower and houses the
gearbox and generator - weighs around 70 tons, and the rotor assembly with blades, each of which can be up to 200 feet long, weighs in at around 40. It is no
surprise that most new facilities in the US are sited close to water and rail, like the Gamesa plant on the Delaware River in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, or the
Siemens factory on the Mississippi in Fort Madison, Iowa.
The United States is playing catch-up to others, especially the Europeans and the Japanese, who have invested heavily in developing the
expertise and manufacturing base for this production. But there are good reasons to believe we can and should catch up. Transporting huge turbines overseas is
unsound from a carbon perspective; with oil periodically breaching $100 per barrel, it is financially irrational as well. Soaring shipping costs (and a foundering
dollar) are already driving greater domestic production. Some of the key wind turbine manufacturers serving the US market, such as Vestas (Denmark), Siemens
(Germany), Gamesa (Spain), Mitsubishi (Japan), and Suzlon (India), have already started to produce turbines locally.
The siting by foreign companies of manufacturing facilities in the United States, and the potential of US manufacturers to be the
links in a supply chain for the wind industry, are signs of progress. They should not obscure the additional promise that US-based
green industries hold to be globally competitive sectors. With the right policy supports, US-based renewable energy and energy
efficiency industries can capture large shares of these rapidly expanding global markets and export their products, from solar cells
to energy efficiency appliances, to consumers around the world.
Sound national policy
The possible future, then, is compelling, as long as we demonstrate the policy smarts and political will to achieve it. This means
crafting sound national policy to create stable domestic markets for renewable energy and using related energy standards as
green job creation tools.
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Economic collapse will cause extinction
Bearden 00, Director of Association of Distinguished American Scientists
[T. E., “The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How to Solve It Quickly,” Space Energy Access Systems, http://www.seaspower.com/EnergyCrisis-Bearden.htm]
History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the
intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are
almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including
U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China — whose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States —
attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict,
escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched,
adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this
side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-bore pre-
emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs.
Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site within the United States itself. The resulting great Armageddon will
destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.
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CONTENTION THREE – Solvency
Federal leadership is the only way to provide sufficient investor confidence to develop a renewables market that boosts U.S.
competitiveness
Flavin & Podesta, 6 – *president of the Worldwatch Institute and **president of theCenter for American Progress, (Christopher
and John, American Energy: The Renewable Path to Energy Security
http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/AmericanEnergy.pdf)
Americans today are no less clever or ambitious than their great-grandparents were. A new and better energy future is possible if
the country can forge a compelling vision of where it wants to be. Recent developments in the global marketplace show the
potential:
• Global wind energy generation has more than tripled since 2000, providing enough electricity to power the homes of about 30
million Americans. The United States led the world in wind energy installations in 2005.
• Production of electricity-generating solar cells is one of the world’s fastest growing industries, up 45 percent in 2005 to six times
the level in 2000.
• Production of fuel ethanol from crops more than doubled between 2000 and 2005, and biodiesel from vegetable oil and waste
expanded nearly four-fold over this period.
Global investment in renewable energy (excluding large hydropower) in 2005 is estimated at $38 billion—equivalent to nearly 20
percent of total annual investment in the electric power sector. Renewable energy investments have nearly doubled over the past
three years, and have increased six-fold since 1995. Next to the Internet, new energy technology has become one of the hottest
investment fields for venture capitalists.
These dynamic growth rates are driving down costs and spurring rapid advances in technologies. They are also creating new
economic opportunities for people around the globe. Today, renewable energy manufacturing, operations, and maintenance
provide approximately two million jobs worldwide.
The United States will need a much stronger commitment to renewable energy if it is to take advantage of these opportunities. As
President Bush has said, America is “addicted to oil,” and dependence on fossil fuels is rising, even in the face of high oil prices
and growing concern about global warming. Of particular concern is the well over 100 coal-fired power plants now on the drawing
boards of the U.S. electricity industry—most of which lack the latest pollution controls and could still be pumping carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere a halfcentury from now.
In order to break the national addiction to outdated fuels and technologies, America will need a world-class energy policy. The
prominent positions that Germany and Spain hold in wind power, for example, and that Japan and Germany enjoy in solar energy,
were achieved thanks to strong and enduring policies that their legislatures adopted in the 1990s. These policies created steadily
growing markets for renewable energy technologies, fueling the development of robust new manufacturing industries.
By contrast, U.S. renewable energy policies over the past two decades have been an ever changing patchwork. Abrupt changes in
direction at both the state and federal levels have deterred investors and led dozens of companies into bankruptcy. If America is to
join the world leaders and achieve the nation’s full potential for renewable energy, it will need world-class energy policies based
on a sustained and consistent policy framework at the local, state, and national levels.
Across the country, the tide has begun to turn. All but four U.S. states now have incentives in place to promote renewable
energy. More than a dozen have enacted new renewable energy laws in the past few years, and four states strengthened their targets
in 2005, signaling fresh political momentum. If such policies continue to proliferate, and are joined by federal leadership, rapid
progress is possible.
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A federal RPS will effectively displace harmful conventional energy sources and eliminate free-riding and externalities that
are caused by individual state efforts. This evidence answers all of their objections a national RPS.
(Benjamin K. Sovacool, also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Asia and Globalization at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and
Christopher Cooper, Sustainable Development Law & Policy, “State Efforts to Promote Renewable Energy: Tripping the Horse with the Cart?”
Fall 2007, 8 Sustainable Dev. L. & Pol'y 5, Lexis-Nexis Academic) // JMP
Third, renewable
energy generation is subject to a free rider problem. Since everyone benefits from the environmental advantages of renewable energy, private
companies that invest millions of dollars in researching and developing clean energy technologies are often unable to recover the full profit of their investments. Inevitably, the
market
allows some consumers to be free riders, benefiting from the investments of others without paying for them.
STATE GOVERNMENT MECHANISMS FOR PROMOTING RENEWABLE ENERGY
State policy interventions intend to stimulate a market for renewable resources and spur additional research, development, and implementation of renewable energy technologies. So far,
state governments in the United States have relied predominately on RPSs and SBCs to level the playing field by neutralizing a legacy of unequal federal subsidies and directly requiring
renewable energy. While
state policies are innovative and well intentioned, the time has come to shift to federal regulation and
intervention. Continued reliance on state-based activity alone will ironically promote more market externalities and "free riding"
than harmonized federal action.
SYSTEM BENEFIT CHARGES
Systems benefit charges (also called public benefit funds, system benefit funds, and clean energy funds) originated in the 1990s at a time when state policy makers were considering
electric utility restructuring legislation. Afraid that gains made in pursuing research, development, and implementation of environmentally-preferable renewable energy technologies would
end after markets were deregulated, advocates of the novel [*6] technologies won concessions in some states for a new funding mechanism for high-risk or long-term projects. A SBC
places a small tax on every kilowatt hour ("kWh") of electricity generated and utilizes those funds to pursue socially-beneficial energy projects. n5 Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory estimates that SBCs have been responsible for promoting 1,117 megawatts ("MW") of renewable energy capacity. n6
SBCs were first implemented in Washington State in 1994 and were endorsed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 1995 as a way to fund services that had previously been
included in customers' bills from regulated utility companies. n7 As part of the negotiations for California's restructuring law, environmental advocates won a provision for a public benefit
fund that would expend at least $ 872 million on energy-efficiency work from 1998 to the end of 2001 and would allocate $ 540 million on renewable energy projects. n8 To develop
renewable energy technologies and other programs expected to struggle after deregulation, the California Energy Commission created its Public Interest Energy Research program, which
initially drew about $ 62 million annually from the state's SBC. n9
By 2006, fifteen states created SBCs. The seventeen organizations that administer the funds, which are scheduled to total $ 4 billion by 2017, collaborate through a nonprofit organization
called the Clean Energy States Alliance. The organization sponsors original research, collects information and analyses, and seeks to expand the use of clean energy technologies with a
special emphasis on solar, wind, and fuel cells. Moreover, the group seeks to increase the efficiency of state research by eliminating duplication of efforts and by providing forums for the
states to share knowledge and insights. n10
RENEWABLE PORTFOLIO STANDARDS
An RPS is a legislative mandate requiring electricity suppliers (often referred to as "load serving entities") in a given geographical area to employ renewable resources to produce a certain
percentage of power by a fixed date.
An RPS program transfers the risk of renewable energy investments from regulators to investors. n11 RPS uses the market as a mechanism to determine the efficacy of any given
technology; as a result, higher costs, if they occur, are distributed evenly throughout society to those that benefit from them, and are blended with the lower costs of existing conventional
generation. n12
Unlike instruments developed by public utility commissions with long and complex procedures, often followed by litigation, RPSs are bureaucratically simple. n13 RPSs enable customers
to pay producers directly for renewable energy, obviating the need for the administration of funds by government agencies. And, unlike a one-time award for funds, no project is
guaranteed a place in the market. n14
First implemented by Iowa and Minnesota in the 1980s, twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have already passed RPS laws requiring utilities to use renewable resources as a
portion of their overall provision of electricity. n15 Four other states have nonbinding renewable energy goals. n16 Five more states--Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Utah--are
considering mandating some form of RPS. Of the approximate 9,000 MW of wind energy in the United States, roughly fifty percent, or 4,500 MW, have been promoted directly by RPS
policies, whereas ten percent, or 900 MW, have been promoted by SBCs from 2001 to 2006. n17
THE CASE FOR FEDERAL INTERVENTION
There are three reasons, however, why continued reliance on state-based efforts such as SBCs and RPSs will be insufficient to promote renewable
energy technologies in the United States on the scale needed to fight climate change.
IMPROVING RELIABILITY
First, federal intervention is needed to improve electricity reliability. Contrary to what some opponents of renewable energy assert, the variability of
renewable resources becomes easier to manage the more they are deployed. Electrical and power systems engineers have long held the principle that the larger a system becomes, the less
reserve capacity it needs. Demand variations between individual consumers are mitigated by grid interconnection in exactly this manner. When a single electricity consumer, for example,
starts drawing more electricity than the system allocated for each consumer, the strain on the system is insignificant because so many consumers are drawing from the grid that it is entirely
likely another consumer will be drawing less to make up the difference. This "averaging" works in a similar fashion on the supply side of the grid. Individual wind turbines average out
each other in electricity supply. n18 So when the wind is not blowing through one wind farm, it is likely blowing harder through another.
Because the technical availability of one wind turbine rivals that of a single conventional power plant, wind farms of hundreds or thousands of turbines have even greater reliability
because it is unlikely that all turbines would be down at the same time. Furthermore, when turbines do malfunction, they take far less time to recover than massive conventional power
plants or nuclear reactors that have literally millions of individual components, arranged in complex circuits prone to mechanical failure. n19 Analysts already confirmed the benefit of
wind power's greater technical availability in the United States. Indeed, a November 2006 study assessing the widespread use of wind power in Minnesota [*7] concluded that "wind
generation does make a calculable contribution to system reliability" by decreasing the risk of large, unexpected outages. n20
Improved reliability of supply is important, as blackouts and brownouts exact a considerable toll on the American economy. The U.S.
Department of Energy ("DOE") estimates that while power interruptions often last only seconds or minutes, they cost consumers an average of $ 150 to 400 billion every year. n21 The
Electric Power Research Institute projects the annual costs of poor power reliability at $ 119 billion, or forty-four percent of all electricity sales in 1995. n22
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However, to
capture such benefits, renewable energy technologies must be spatially deployed in every state and must have national
penetration rates above ten percent. Penetration rates of renewable energy technologies nationwide are still low--around three percent of overall installed electricity capacity
in 2007. Collective state efforts are expected to increase this amount to only around four percent by 2015 and five percent by 2030, but the environmental benefits of renewable energy
only really start to accrue at penetration rates well above this rate. Federal
intervention in the form of a nation-wide SBC or RPS aiming for targets of ten
to twenty percent by 2020 would expand the diversity of technologies used to access renewable resources.
IMPROVING ENERGY SECURITY
Second, larger penetration rates are needed to ensure energy security. This is because the geographical dispersion of generators not only
improves their overall reliability; it makes them more secure--and thus resilient to accidental power outages and failure, or
intentional attack and disruption. Notwithstanding intense media focus on the security dangers from nuclear reactors and natural gas facilities, the nation's power
grid represents an equally serious threat to energy security. The security issues facing the modern electric utility grid are almost as serious as they are invisible.
For example, in 1975 the New World Liberation Front bombed assets of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company more than ten times, and members of the Ku Klux Klan and San Joaquin
Militia have been convicted of attempting to attack electricity infrastructure. n23 Internationally, organized paramilitaries such as the Farabundo-Marti National Liberation Front were able
to interrupt more than ninety percent of electric service in El Salvador and even had manuals for attacking power systems. n24
Some caution that all it would take to cause a "cascade of power failures across the country," costing billions of dollars in direct and indirect damage, is a few motivated people with
minivans and a couple of mortars and balloons, which they would use to chaff substations and disrupt transmission lines. n25 A deliberate, aggressive, well-coordinated assault on the
electric power grid could devastate the electricity sector. Replacement time would be "on the order of Iraq," not "on the order of a lineman putting things up a pole." n26
Several recent trends in the electric utility industry have increased the vulnerability of its infrastructure. To improve their operational
efficiency, many utilities and system operators have increased their reliance on automation and computerization. Low margins and various competitive priorities have encouraged industry
consolidation, with fewer and bigger facilities and intensive use of assets in one place. As the National Research Council noted, "control is more centralized, spare parts inventories have
been reduced, and subsystems are highly integrated across the entire business." n27
Federal promotion of renewable energy on a national scale can improve the security of the grid by decentralizing electricity
generation. Even when renewable resources like wind and solar are concentrated, the tendency for them to produce power in incremental and modular amounts makes it much more
difficult to disrupt large segments of generation. The International Energy Agency has noted that centralized energy facilities create significant targets for terrorism because attacking a few
facilities can cause large power outages. n28 In
contrast to the security risks of large centralized generators, decentralizing energy facilities and
providing power through more modular and distributed energy systems minimizes the risk of accidents and grid failures, and does not
require transporting or storing hazardous or radioactive materials. Analysts have tended to refer to renewable energy systems (and other forms of distributed generation such as fuel cells
and small-scale cogeneration units) as "supple" power technologies because they are modular suited to dispersed siting. n29 A national
RPS or SBC promoting renewables
could greatly contribute to the overall security of the nation's electric infrastructure by forcing more technologies into the portfolio
of all American utilities.
PROVIDING CLIMATE BENEFITS
Third, and perhaps most important, federal intervention is needed to fight climate change and minimize "free-riding" going on in
states that have chosen to rely on nuclear and fossil fuels to generate electricity, instead of promoting renewable energy. The DOE has already determined that only
"the imposition of [a national] RPS would lead to lower generation from natural gas and coal facilities." n30 Examinations of fuel generation
in several states confirm this finding, as well as the tendency for a national RPS to displace oil-fired generation, which is still a significant source of electricity in Florida, New York, and
Hawaii. Equally important, but often overlooked, is how SBC- or RPS-induced renewable generation would offset nuclear power in several regions of the United States.
[*8] Researchers in North Carolina, for example, determined that a state-wide RPS would displace facilities relying on nuclear fuels and minimize the environmental impacts associated
with the extraction of uranium used to fuel nuclear reactors. n31 In Oregon, the Governor's Renewable Energy Working Group analyzed a twenty-five percent statewide RPS by 2025 and
projected that every fifty MW of renewable energy would displace approximately twenty MW of base-load resources, including nuclear power. n32 Environment Michigan estimates that a
twenty percent RPS by 2020 would displace the need for more than 640 MW of power that would have otherwise come from both nuclear and coal facilities. n33
By offsetting the generation of conventional and nuclear power plants, only large-scale renewable energy penetration rates would
avoid many of the environmental and social costs associated with the mining, processing, transportation, combustion, and clean-up
of fossil and nuclear fuels. By promoting technologies that displace conventional forms of electricity generation, federal promotion of renewable energy would substantially
decrease air pollution in the United States. A single one MW wind turbine running at only thirty percent of capacity for one year displaces more than 1,500 tons of carbon dioxide, 2.5 tons
of sulfur dioxide 3.2 tons of nitrous oxides, and 60 pounds of toxic mercury emissions. n34
One study assessing the environmental potential of a 580 MW wind farm located on the Altamont Pass near San Francisco, California, concluded that the turbines displaced hundreds of
thousands of tons of air pollutants each year that would have otherwise resulted from fossil fuel combustion. n35 The study estimated that the wind farm would displace more than twenty-
four billion pounds of nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxides, particulate matter, and carbon dioxide over the course of its twenty-year lifetime--enough to cover the entire city of Oakland,
California in a pile of toxic pollution forty-stories high. n36
Renewable energy technologies possess an even greater ability to mitigate climate change. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that when direct and indirect carbon
emissions are included, coal plants are around ten times more carbon intensive than solar technologies and more than forty times more carbon intensive than wind technologies. Natural
gas fares little better, at three times as carbon intense as solar and twenty times as carbon intensive as wind. n37 The Common Purpose Institute estimates that renewable energy
technologies could offset as much as 0.49 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per every MWh of generation. According to data compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a twenty
percent RPS would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 434 million metric tons by 2020--a reduction of fifteen percent below "business as usual" levels, or the equivalent to taking nearly
seventy-one million automobiles off the road. n38
These estimates are not simply theoretical. Between 1991 and 1997 renewable energy technologies in the Netherlands reduced that country's annual emissions of CO[2] between 4.4
million and 6.7 million tons. Renewable
technologies were so successful at displacing greenhouse gas emissions that Europe now views
renewable energy as "the major tool of distribution utilities in meeting industry CO[2] reduction targets." n40
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1ac
CONCLUSION
Given such obvious and overwhelming advantages, it is hard to believe that many utilities and policymakers diligently oppose national promotion on renewable energy, repeating myths
that have long since been debunked. Largely, the remaining objections to federal intervention constitute a diminishing series of canards that mischaracterize a national SBC or RPS as an
unnecessary federal intervention in a relatively free market. Forgetting that a
majority of states are well on their way to imposing their own clunky,
overlapping, inconsistent, competing, and sometimes irrational mess of mandates, opponents churn out four war-torn myths every time the issue is
considered:
The first criticism is that a national SBC or RPS would create "winners and losers." In reality, all states have renewable resources they can affordably develop. However, under the current
system of state mandates, some states are "losers" by subsidizing the cheap, polluting electricity in other states. Other states are victims to inconsistencies between state mandates that
produce perverse predatory trade-offs and require them to export their cheap in-state renewable electricity in exchange for more expensive electricity or renewable energy credits. A
national mandate would level the playing field by creating consistent, uniform rules and by allowing utilities to purchase
renewable energy credits or develop renewable resources anywhere they are cost competitive.
The second criticism is that a national mandate would increase electricity rates. However, in most states, renewable [*9] energy mandates have not
significantly increased rates and a consensus of economic models predict that a national policy would generate substantial
consumer savings over the existing patchwork of state programs. By expanding the amount of energy that would offset gas-fired generation, a federal
intervention would reduce demand on a strained and volatile natural gas market. Renewable energy units with markedly faster lead-times than
conventional and nuclear reactors speeds the cost recovery of critical transmission investments and reduces the rate increases needed to pay for new
transmission.
Another common criticism is that a federal mandate would harm the utilities sector in the form of future profits they will not be able to recover from consumers through higher electricity
rates. For policymakers, balancing utility profits with electricity prices is one of the hard decisions we elect them to make. However, elected officials should consider that utility claims of
lost profit are short-sited and strategically unsound. In reality, a more predictable regulatory environment decreases utility litigation and compliance costs relative to a growing tangle of
vague and unstable state mandates. Expanding the universe of eligible renewable resources and establishing clear, uniform trading rules creates far more flexibility for regulated utilities
and rewards utility investments on the basis of smart market strategy. By
promoting a robust domestic renewable energy manufacturing sector, a
national mandate reduces the costs utilities pay in unfavorable exchange rates for foreign parts and labor and redirects those
investments to the U.S. labor market.
A final criticism is that a national RPS or SBC would promote only least-cost options such as wind turbines and landfill gas generators (and not solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, small-
scale hydroelectric, and geothermal plants). Existing state programs, however, reveal that mandates with broad qualifying resource eligibility actually have led to the development of many
different renewable resources. Utilities have already demonstrated that they can meet state requirements by deploying a diverse portfolio of renewable resources that best match their
service areas. By
geographically and monetarily expanding the market for renewable resources, a national RPS is likely to further
diversify the deployment of renewable energy technologies. In Nevada, geothermal energy may be cheaper to develop than wind. In the Pacific Northwest,
incremental hydroelectric power may be cheaper than solar. In the Southeast, biomass may be the most affordable. A national RPS mandate with a fuel-based definition of eligible
renewable resources ensures that free market principles, rather than regulatory set-asides or political patronage, determine which technologies will be most cost competitive in certain areas
of the country. An added bonus is that a
national RPS decreases compliance costs for regulated utilities, since a technology-neutral mandate
allows utilities to meet RPS obligations using the technology that is most cost competitive for the fuels available.
Ultimately, by establishing a consistent, national mandate and uniform trading rules, a national SBC or RPS can create a more just and predictable regulatory environment for utilities
while jump-starting a robust national renewable energy technology sector. By
offsetting electricity that utilities would otherwise generate with
conventional and nuclear power, a federal action would decrease electricity prices for American consumers while protecting
human health and the environment at a scale and magnitude not possible with state programs.
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Inh – No renewable now
Oil, coal and natural gas will continue to dominate
Dr. Sovacool, & Coooper, 7 – *Senior Research Fellow for the Network for New Energy Choices in New York and Adjunct
In an early release of its 2007 Annual Energy Outlook, EIA's updated analysis reflects the same general trend for renewables:
Despite the rapid growth projected for biofuels and other non-hydroelectric renewable energy sources ... oil, coal, and natural gas
still are projected to provide roughly the same 86-percent share of the total U.S. primary energy supply in 2030 that they did in
2005.13
Significantly, EIA expects base-load fossil fuel generation to continue to have low operating costs compared to current renewable
technologies, making it harder for renewables to compete in state-based electricity markets without some form of regulatory
intervention.14
Investment in energy technology is declining – lack of a federal lead

Kammen, 7 – Professor in the Energy and Resources Group and Professor of Public Policy at Cal Berkeley
(Daniel M., also Director, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at Berkeley, “Green Jobs Created by Global Warming
Initiatives,” Congressional Testimony on 9-25-2007, http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/eeworkshop/CPUC-
new/summit/docs/Kammen_Senate_EPW-9-26.pdf) //JMP
The larger issue, however, is that as a nation we invest less in energy research, development, and deployment than do a few large
biotechnology firms in their own, private R&D budgets. This is unacceptable on many fronts. The least of which is that we know
that investments in energy research pay off at both the national and private sector levels.
In a series of papers (Margolis and Kammen, 1999; Kammen and Nemet, 2005; Nemet and Kammen, 2007) my students and I
have documented a disturbing trend away from investment in energy technology—both by the federal government and the private
sector, which largely follows the federal lead. The U.S. invests about $1 billion less in energy R&D today than it did a decade ago.
This trend is remarkable, first because the levels in the mid-1990s had already been identified as dangerously low, and second
because, as our analysis indicates, the decline is pervasive—across almost every energy technology category, in both the public
and private sectors, and at multiple stages in the innovation process. In each of these areas investment has been either been
stagnant or declining. Moreover, the decline in investment in energy has occurred while overall U.S. R&D has grown by 6% per
year, and federal R&D investments in health and defense have grown by 10 to 15% per year, respectively.
One of the clearest findings from tracking actual investment histories, is that there is a direct and strong correlation between
investment in innovation and demonstrated changes in performance and cost of technologies available in the market.
The U.S. under invests in clean energy development

Raise Clean Energy Research, Development, and Deployment Spending to Reasonable Levels
The U. S. has under-invested in energy research, development, and deployment for decades (Kammen and Nemet, 2005), and sadly the FY2008
budget request is no exception. Federal energy research and development investment is today back at pre-OPEC levels – despite a panoply of reasons why energy dependence and in-
security, and climatic impact from our energy economy are dominating local economics, geopolitics, and environmental degradation
At $2.7 billion, the overall energy RD&D FY08 request is $685 million higher than the FY06 appropriated budget. Half of that increased request is accounted for by increases in fission,
and the rest is in moderate increases in funding for biofuels, solar, FutureGen, and $147 million increase for fusion research. However, the
National Renewable Energy
Laboratory’s (NREL) budget is to be cut precisely at a time when concerns over energy security and climate change are at their
highest level, and level of need. The fact that a plan exists to cut assistance to lowincome families by 41% from FY06 levels for weatherization to improve the energy
efficiency of their homes is startling.
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Inh – A2 states solving now
Existing State RPS systems have not effectively expanded renewables
Dr. Sovacool, & Coooper, 7 – *Senior Research Fellow for the Network for New Energy Choices in New York and Adjunct
I The Seven Deadly Sins of State-Based RPS

A First sin: Failing to diversify fuels
Even though some state RPS programs are decades old (Iowa's Alternative Energy Production law passed in 1985 and Minnesota mandated utilities purchase renewable energy in 1994),
state standards have failed to substantially increase the deployment of renewable energy technologies on a national scale.7 For the past
15 years, non-hydroelectric renewable energy resources have provided around 2 percent of the country's electricity supply.8 Even with the contribution of the existing 21 state RPS
mandates, projections show that this percentage is unlikely to improve considerably.9
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) uses one of the most rigorous methodological tools to estimate future renewable energy deployment: the National Energy Modeling
System (NEMS). NEMS tracks the geographical differences in regional energy markets at sub-state levels, including census divisions and North American Electric Reliability Council
(NERC) sub-regions. NEMS also is used as a benchmark for models employed by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Tellus Institute in their own projections of renewable
energy production.
In its 2006 Annual Energy Outlook, the EIA used NEMS to estimate the contribution of renewable fuels to U.S. electricity supply given existing state-based RPS mandates. According to
NEMS, electricity generation from biomass is expected to increase from 0.9 percent of total generation in 2004 to 1.7 percent in 2030. Wind is forecast to increase from 0.4 percent to just
1.1 percent of total generation. Geothermal power is projected to increase from 0.4 percent to 0.9 percent. Grid-connected solar is anticipated to remain at less than 0.1 percent of total
generation.10
Nationally, EIA's projection means that non-hydroelectric
renewable energy deployment is expected to rise to no more than about 3 percent by
2015 and 4 percent by 2030. Of the capacity stimulated by state RPS programs, more than 93 percent is estimated to result from large wind farms.11 When broken down by
state, the EIA projects that 3.7GW of central-station renewable energy capacity will be added in Texas, 3.4GW in California, 0.9GW in Nevada, and 0.5GW in Minnesota. In Arizona,
Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin, small projects are projected to increase the
production of renewable energy by only 100 to 200MW in each state.12
Existing States RPSs won’t effectively expand renewables

Barkenbus & Sovacool, 7 – *senior research associate at the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies and
**Senior Research Fellow for the Network for New Energy Choices in New York and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Virginia
Polytechnic Institute
(Jack N. Barkenbus and Benjamin K. Sovacool, Environment, “Necessary but insufficient: state renewable portfolio standards and
climate change policies,” July/August, www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-167151846.html) // JMP
Taken together, state action on RPS is insufficient in significantly promoting national renewable energy capacity. Despite the
progress made by state RPS, the deployment of renewable resources has stayed relatively the same. Almost 10 years ago, renewable energy
technologies constituted approximately 2 percent of the country's electricity supply (when excluding large hydroelectric facilities). (26) In 2006, the U.S. Energy Information
Administration (EIA) estimated that non-hydroelectric renewables still provided about 2 percent of America's electricity supply. Even
when all state RPS are included in
projections, EIA estimates that the contribution of renewable resources is unlikely to exceed 3 percent of total electricity supply by
2017 or 4 percent by 2030. (27)
Inconsistencies in State regulations are inevitable for 3 reasons

- Differences in wealth, knowledge and interest group politics
Barkenbus & Sovacool, 7 – *senior research associate at the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies and
**Senior Research Fellow for the Network for New Energy Choices in New York and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Virginia
Polytechnic Institute
(Jack N. Barkenbus and Benjamin K. Sovacool, Environment, “Necessary but insufficient: state renewable portfolio standards and
climate change policies,” July/August, www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-167151846.html) // JMP
Meanwhile, in the United States, the federal government has set no national target for renewable energy, established no national cap on greenhouse gas emissions, and refused to create a
nationwide trading system for carbon credits. As a result of the administration's unwillingness to take forceful actions commensurate with the nation's leadership and responsibilities, the
country remains unprepared to face the unprecedented energy and environmental challenges that loom in the future.
Prior to the 1970s, the country faced a similar situation. U.S. regulation consisted of a medley of state laws, local ordinances, and common
law nuisance protections that left significant gaps in the scope and duration of environmental protection. However, it was generally believed that significant
inconsistencies were present in state regulation based on their relative differences in wealth, knowledge, and interest group
pressure. A significant disparity also occurred concerning the rate at which states adopted environmental regulation--a disparity influenced by trends in population growth, the extent
that environmental services were perceived to have a value in a state's economy, and the revenue that individual states received from recreational activities such as hunting and fishing. (3)
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Environment – RPS decreases coal use
RPS will reduce natural gas and coal use
A National RPS Better Conserves Water, Air and Land

• A national RPS would displace coal and natural gas.
In a 2002 assessment of a 10% national RPS, the Department f Energy determined that “the imposition of a national RPS would
lead to lower generation from natural gas and coal facilities.” Analysts have confirmed this trade-off in RPS states like Michigan,
New York, Virginia, and Texas. // pg. 11
Renewables are key to reduce harmful environmental impacts of coal use and production
Nogee et. al., 7 – energy analyst and advocate for UCS (Alan Nogee, Jeff Deyette, Steve Clemmer, The Electricity Journal, “The
Projected Impacts of a National Renewable Portfolio Standard,” May 2007, lexis-nexis) // AMK
D. Environmental and public health benefits

Electricity use has a significant impact on the environment and public health. Electricity accounts for less than 3 percent of U.S.
economic activity, yet the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas for power currently accounts for more than 26 percent of smog-
producing nitrogen oxide emissions, one-third of toxic mercury emissions, and 64 percent of acid rain-causing SO2 emissions.
Increased renewable energy use can help reduce these harmful emissions, or reduce the cost of complying with pollutant reduction
requirements. And by reducing the need to extract, transport, and consume fossil fuels, a national RPS would limit the damage
done to our water and land and conserve natural resources for future generations.
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Environment – Renewables conserve water
A national RPs will conserve and protect water resources
Renewables Save Water

By promoting wind, solar, and other renewable resources that do not consume or withdraw water, a national RPS can help
conserve this dwindling essential resource. In a 2006 report, the Department of Energy acknowledged wind power and solar
photovoltaics could play a key role in averting a “business-as-usual scenario” where “consumption of water in the electric
sector could grow substantially.”264
A recent DOE report noted that “greater additions of wind to offset fossil, hydropower, and nuclear assets in a generation portfolio
will result in a technology that uses no water, offsetting water-dependent technologies.”265 Ed Brown, director of Environmental
Programs at the University of Northern Iowa, estimated that a 100-watt solar panel would save approximately 2,000 to 3,000
gallons of water over the course of its lifetime. Similarly, Dr. Brown concluded that “billions of gallons of water can be saved
every day” through the greater use of renewable energy technologies.266
The American Wind Energy Association conducted one of the most comprehensive assessments of renewable energy and water
consumption. Their study estimated that wind power uses less than 1/600 as much water per unit of electricity produced as does
nuclear, 1/500 as much as coal, and 1/250 as much as natural gas (small amounts of water are used to clean wind and
solar systems).267
In short, by displacing centralized fossil fuel and nuclear generation, a national RPS conserves substantial amounts of water that
would otherwise be withdrawn and consumed for the production of electricity. // pg. 101-102
Renewables will dramatically decrease water use

• Renewable energy offsets nuclear power.

Studies from Michigan, North Carolina, and Oregon found that renewable generation displaces new nuclear reactors and decreases
the mining of uranium.
• A national RPS saves billions of gallons of water.
Conventional and nuclear power plants will soon be withdrawing more water for electricity production than America’s farmers use
for all the irrigated agriculture in the entire nation (over 3.3 billion gallons each day).
A nuclear reactor requires 600 times as much water to generate the same amount of electricity as a wind farm. A coal-fired plant
uses 500 times as much water as a wind farm; A gas-fired plant uses 250 times as much. A single 100-watt solar panel saves up to
3,000 gallons of water over its lifetime. // pg. 12
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Environment – Fossil Fuels hurt the Environment
Independently, the production of fossil fuels destroys the environment in several different ways
D. Fuel Production Impacts

In addition to the environmental damage caused by fossil fuel combustion, the
production of fossil fuels and uranium – the drilling, mining, processing
and transportation – produces a substantial amount of pollution and toxic waste. In the United States, there are more than 150 refineries,
4,000 offshore platforms, 410 underground gas storage fields, 125 nuclear waste storage facilities, 160,000 miles of oil pipelines,
and1.4 million miles of natural gas pipelines. Each can degrade their surrounding environment and negatively impact the health
and safety of Americans.308
Oil and Gas Drilling
The United States Geological Survey estimated that there are more than two million oil and natural gas wells in the domestic U.S. The most intense areas of oil and gas production are
off the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and along the northern coast of Alaska.
Offshore oil and natural gas exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico chronically exposes aquatic and marine wildlife to low-level releases of many chemicals through
the discharge and seafloor accumulation of drilling muds and cuttings, as well as the continual release of low-levels of hydrocarbons around production platforms. These
chronic environmental perturbations and the biological exposures continue to threaten marine biodiversity over wide areas of the Gulf.310
Independent studies undertaken by three groups of ecologists and the National Academies of Science have concluded that arctic oil and gas production on the North Slope in Alaska
disrupts tundra surfaces and alters the hydrological processes of wetland ecosystems responsible for the spawning and development of wildlife. North Slope oil production also
undermines nutrient availability for tundra plants necessary for food, habitats, and land integrity, and prematurely thaws the ice and permafrost.311
Coal Mining
Coal extraction, processing, and transportation have a direct affect on water and land resources. Of the more than 1 billion tons of coal mined in
the United States annually, roughly 70 percent comes from surface mines.312
Mountaintop removal—a newer technique for mining coal that uses heavy explosives to blast away the tops of mountains—in the Appalachians has destroyed streams,
blighted landscapes, and diminished the water quality of rural communities.
Failing coal slurry impoundments, acid mine drainage, aquifer disruption, saline pollution from coal-bed methane recovery, and occupational safety and health hazards (including mine-
related deaths) are among the impacts of continued reliance on coal-fired electricity production.314
Coal Transportation
Most coal is transported an average distance of 500 miles before it is combusted in power plants.315 The safety of coal trucks is not a minor concern. Roadway fatalities are twice as
high on coal-hauling roads. Safety advocates in Kentucky have expressed concern with the operation of coal trucks within the state, which in one four-year period witnessed more than 1
person killed each month by coal-hauling trucks.
Between 2000 and 2004, Kentucky documented 704 accidents involving coal trucks, resulting in the deaths of 53 people and the injury of more than 535.316
Natural Gas Storage
During the summer months, domestic natural gas production and imported natural gas far exceed demand, so excess supply is placed in large underground storage facilities.317 Around
400 natural gas storage facilities have been constructed in the United States, storing an estimated 8.25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The three principal types of underground storage
sites used are depleted oil and gas reservoirs, aquifers, and salt cavern formations.318
The DOE and energy companies spent an estimated $4 billion (in 2000 dollars) to create artificial caverns and salt domes below the surface to store oil.
Oil and natural gas storage facilities, in addition to significantly adding to the cost of natural gas and oil infrastructure, are susceptible to serious accidents
that can pollute the air and water of local communities. One report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory noted that leaks can occur due to improper
well design, construction, maintenance, operation.320 The report cautioned that leakage from natural gas storage structures can be especially hazardous when they cause natural gas to
migrate into drinking-water aquifers or escape to the surface, creating a “significant safety risk.” Leaked natural gas can significantly endanger life and property, water resources,
vegetation, and crops.321
Indeed, In January, 2001, hundreds of explosions rocked the Yaggy field—a natural gas salt formation storage site in Hutchinson, Kansas—when natural gas escaped from one of the
storage wells and erupted into a seven mile wall of fire (burning an estimated 143 million cubic feet of natural gas). Clean up for the disaster necessitated the construction of 57 new vent
wells, extending a distance of more than 9 miles and devastating the local ecology.
Overpressurization (needed to enlarge gas bubbles and obtain higher delivery rates) is another main cause of leakage, as many underground natural gas storage projects tend to be operated
at pressures exceeding their original designs. Such leaks can become excessively costly: The Gulf South Pipeline Company’s Magnolia facility—a $234 million salt-cavern facility—
opened in 2003 only to permanently close a few months later after a well collapsed.323
Nuclear Waste Storage
The safetyand security of spent nuclear fuel remains a serious problem in the U.S. Nuclear reactor facilities are running out of
space to store nuclear waste, and Yucca Mountain—a federally funded permanent storage facility being built in Nevada—has only enough space for 63,000 tons.324
The Department of Energy has relied upon on-site storage as a stop-gap remedy until Yucca Mountain is finalized or the U.S. finds a long-term solution to nuclear waste. As a result,
by 2004, more than 49,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel was scattered in dry casks and storage pools in seventy different locations in the U.S. That amount is expected to more than double to
105,000 tons by 2039. 325 // pg. 116-122
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Environment – Air Pollution Ext
Conventional energy sources are the largest source of air pollution that kills 70,000 each year – a national RPS solves
C. Air Quality
Conventional electricity generation is by far the largest source of air pollutants that harm human health and contribute to global
warming. In 2003, for example, fossil fuel use (for all energy sectors, not just electricity) was responsible for 99 percent of the
country’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, 93 percent of its sulfur dioxide (SOx) emissions, and 96 percent of its nitrous
oxides emissions (NOx).269
Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health estimated that the air pollution from conventional energy sources kills between
50,000 and 70,000 Americans every year. These researchers found that the emissions from just 9 power plants in Illinois
directly contributed to an annual risk of 300 premature deaths, 14,000 asthma attacks, and more than 400,000 daily incidents of
upper respiratory symptoms among the 33 million people living within 250 miles of the plants.271
Compiling data from the American Cancer Society, Harvard School of Public Health, and Environmental Protection Agency, the
Clean the Air Grassroots Network estimated that residents in every single U.S. state were at risk to premature death from air
pollution. 272
Children are particularly vulnerable to the pollution from fossil fuels. Because children spend more time outside and have smaller
airways that necessitate more rapid breathing, they are much more vulnerable to develop illnesses associated with air pollution.273
By promoting technologies that displace conventional forms of electricity generation, a national RPS would substantially decrease
air pollution in the U.S. A single 1 MW wind turbine running at only 30 percent of capacity for one year displaces more than 1,500
tons of carbon dioxide, 2.5 tons of sulfur dioxide 3.2 tons of nitrous oxides, and 60 pounds of toxic mercury (Hg) emissions.274
One study assessing the environmental potential of a 580 MW wind farm located on the Altamont Pass near San Francisco,
California, concluded that the turbines displaced hundreds of thousands of tons of air pollutants each year that would have
otherwise resulted from fossil fuel combustion. 275
The study estimated that the wind farm would displace more than 24 billion pounds of nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxides, particulate
matter and carbon dioxide over the course of its 20-year lifetime — enough to cover the entire city of Oakland in a pile of toxic
pollution 40 stories high.276 // pg. 102-105
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Environment – Acid rain Ext
Coal emits the most SO2 and NOx
EPA, 2 (Environmental Protection Agency, “What is Acid Rain and What Causes It?” 8-6-2002,
http://www.policyalmanac.org/environment/archive/acid_rain.shtml) -CMM
Almost all of the electricity that powers modern life comes from burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil. acid deposition
is caused by two pollutants that are released into the atmosphere, or emitted, when these fuels are burned: sulfur dioxide (SO2) and
nitrogen oxides (NOx). Coal accounts for most US sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions and a large portion of NOx emissions. Sulfur is
present in coal as an impurity, and it reacts with air when the coal is burned to form SO2. In contrast, NOx is formed when any
fossil fuel is burned.
Coal releases major amounts of CO2, SO2, NOx, and CO
UCS, 5 (Union of Concerned Scientists, “Environmental impacts of coal power:

air pollution,” 8-18-05, http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html) -
Burning coal is a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, and air toxics. In an average year, a typical coal plant
generates: 3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary human cause of global warming--as much carbon dioxide as
cutting down 161 million trees. 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which causes acid rain that damages forests, lakes, and
buildings, and forms small airborne particles that can penetrate deep into lungs. 500 tons of small airborne particles, which can
cause chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death, as well as haze obstructing visibility. 10,200 tons of nitrogen
oxide (NOx), as much as would be emitted by half a million late-model cars. NOx leads to formation of ozone (smog) which
inflames the lungs, burning through lung tissue making people more susceptible to respiratory illness. 720 tons of carbon
monoxide (CO), which causes headaches and place additional stress on people with heart disease.> 220 tons of hydrocarbons,
volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone. 170 pounds of mercury, where just 1/70th of a teaspoon deposited on a 25-
acre lake can make the fish unsafe to eat. 225 pounds of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who drink
water containing 50 parts per billion. 114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of
uranium.
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Environment – Renewables solve
RPS will reduce air pollution and greenhouse emissions
• A national RPS reduces air pollution.

Air pollution from conventional power plants kills between 50,000 and 70,000 Americans each year. A single 1 MW wind turbine
(operating at only 30% capacity) displaces 96 tons of nitrous oxides, 69 tons of sulfur dioxide and 1800 pounds of toxic mercury
during its 30-year lifespan.
• A national RPS reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Renewable energies could offset almost ½ ton of carbon dioxide for every MW generated. A 20% by 2020 national RPS could
reduce as much carbon dioxide as taking 71 million cars off the nation’s roads. // pg. 12
Renewable energy reduces air pollution, acid rain and greenhouse gases
Kammen, et al, 1 – Professor of Energy and Society with the Energy and Resources Group and Professor Public Policy at Cal
Berkeley
(Dan Kammen – Director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, Antonia Herzog and Timothy E. Lipman –
postdoctoral researchers at RAEL, and Jennifer L. Edwards – research assistant at RAEL, Environment, “Renewable Energy: A
Viable Choice,” December 2001, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-80932983.html) // JMP
Renewable Energy Technologies

Conventional energy sources based on oil, coal, and natural gas have proven to be highly effective drivers of economic progress,
but at the same time, they are highly damaging to the environment and human health. These traditional energy sources are facing
increasing pressure on a host of environmental fronts, with perhaps the most serious being the looming threat of climate change
and a needed reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, It is now clear that efforts to maintain atmospheric [CO.sub.2]
concentrations below even double the pre-industrial levels cannot be accomplished in an oil- and coal-dominated global economy.
Theoretically, renewable energy sources can meet many times the world's energy demand. More important, renewable energy
technologies can now be considered major components of local and regional energy systems. Solar, biomass, and wind energy
resources, combined with new efficiency measures available for deployment in California today, could supply half of the state's
total energy needs. As an alternative to centralized power plants, renewable energy systems are ideally suited to provide a
decentralized power supply that could help to lower capital infrastructure costs. Renewable systems based on photovoltaic arrays,
windmills, biomass, or small hydropower can serve as mass-produced "energy appliances" that can be manufactured at low cost
and tailored to meet specific energy loads and service conditions. These systems have less of an impact on the environment, and
the impact they do have is more widely dispersed than that of centralized power plants, which in some cases contribute
significantly to ambient air pollution and acid rain.
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Aff novice packet
Cmptvns – US falling behind
The U.S. is falling behind on renewable energy technology—national policy is key to solve.
Obama in 8— Senator of Illinois and Presidential Candidate (Barack, “Obama: McCain Has Failed Us On Energy ‘For
Decades’”, 6-24-08, Talking Points Memo Election Central,
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/obama_mccain_has_failed_us_on.php)
It isn't because the resources and technology aren't there. We know this because countries like Spain, Germany, and Japan have
already leapt ahead of us when it comes to renewable energy technology. Germany, a country as cloudy as the Pacific Northwest,
is now a world leader in the solar power industry and the quarter million new jobs it has created. In less than eight years, before
we'd ever see a drop of oil from offshore drilling, they have doubled their renewable energy output. And they did it by using
technology that, in some cases, was paid for by the American people through our own Research and Development tax credits. The
difference is, their government harnessed that technology by providing the necessary investments and incentives to jumpstart a
renewable energy industry. Washington hasn't done that.
What Washington has done is what Washington always does - it's peddled false promises, irresponsible policy, and cheap
gimmicks that might get politicians through the next election, but won't lead America toward the next generation of renewable
energy. And now we're paying the price. Now we've fallen behind the rest of the world. Now we're forced to beg Saudi Arabia for
more oil. Now we're facing gas prices over $4 a gallon - gas prices that are decimating the savings of families who are already
struggling in this economy. Like the man I met in Pennsylvania who lost his job and couldn't even afford the gas to drive around
and look for a new one. That's how badly folks are hurting. That's how badly Washington has failed.
Other countries are developing clean technologies and expanding their export opportunities
A growing number of state, regional, and national economies are assuming leadership positions for a clean, low carbon, energy
economy. These ‘early actors’ are reaping the economic benefits of their actions. Among the global leaders are Brazil, Denmark,
Iceland Germany, Japan, Spain, all of which have made significant commitments to a green economy, and all are seeing job growth
and rapidly expanding export opportunities. In the United States several states have embarked on significant climate protection
efforts, and half of U. S. states have taken the vital step of adopting minimum levels of renewable energy requirements.
The threshold for the advantage is super small
Johnson, 8 – has spent the past decade reporting from Europe, increasingly on energy issues
(Keith, “Any Given Wednesday: Green Jobs on the Hill,” 2-5-2008, http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/02/05/) // JMP
“Competitiveness is a game of inches,” Daniel Seligman says, echoing Al Pacino. The Washington director for the Apollo Alliance,
a clean-energy lobby, says the U.S. can’t risk losing ground to foreign countries with vibrant alternative-energy sectors.
Renewing renewable tax credits—even just for a year—is one small step on that transformation, argue some proponents. And they
say it fits perfectly well into the stimulus package.
“Opposition [to the credits] is symbolic of old thinking, that this isn’t a core issue to the economy,” says Bracken Hendricks, a
Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C. think tank. “But greening the economy is core economic
strategy,” he says.
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Aff novice packet
Cmptvns – RPS boosts competitiveness
RPS is key to boost U.S. competitiveness
Conclusion
Now is the Time for Federal RPS
It is time that federal policymakers engage in an informed, comprehensive and rational debate about the few remaining objections to a federal RPS mandate. America faces
serious and mounting energy problems:
- continued dependence on dwindling foreign sources of fossil fuels and uranium
- an undiversified electricity fuel mixture that leaves the nation vulnerable to serious national security threats
- reliance on an ancient and overwhelmed transmission grid that risks more common, more pronounced, and more expensive catastrophic system failures
- an impending climate crisis that will require massive and expensive emissions controls costing billions of dollars and substantially reducing U.S. GDP
- loss of American economic competitiveness as Europe and Japan become the major manufacturing center for new clean energy
technologies
It is time to decide. By establishing a consistent, national mandate and uniform trading rules, a national RPS can create a more just and
more predictable regulatory environment for utilities while jump-starting a robust national renewable energy technology sector. By
offsetting electricity that utilities would otherwise generate with conventional and nuclear power, a national RPS would decrease electricity prices for American consumers while
protecting human health and the environment.
There is a time for accepting the quirks and foibles of state experimentation in national energy policy; and there is a time to look to the states as laboratories for policy innovation. Now is
the time to model the best state RPS programs and craft a coherent national policy that protects the interests of regulated utilities and American consumers.
Now is the time for federal leadership. // pg. 13
Federal RPS would push the renewable industry in a world leadership position.
Haynes, 4 - Policy Analyst, N.C. Solar Center, N.C. State University (Rusty, “Systematic Support for Renewable Energy in the
United States and Beyond: A Selection of Policy Options and Recommendations,” 2004,
http://www.dsireusa.org/documents/PolicyPublications/Haynes_KIER_Keynote.pdf, AG)
Government programs implemented by Germany and Japan during the 1990s have proven that committed, long-term (but
adaptable) federal policies can catapult a country’s industry into a world leadership position within a decade. Given the
tremendous success of these policies, federal governments in a position to support renewable energy should also seriously consider
adopting programs modeled on Germany’s and Japan’s. When designing a financial incentive or regulatory policy to promote
renewable energy, it is usually advisable for governments, when possible, to involve all stakeholders who will be affected.
20% RPS would significantly boost economic competitiveness.
Sierra Club no date cited (Myths vs. Reality About a 20% Renewable Portfolio Standard,
http://www.sierraclub.org/energy/cleanenergy/renewables.asp)
Reality: The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) recently completed a study, Renewing Where We Live, which shows that the
U.S. has more than sufficient potential to produce 20% of our electricity from renewable sources. Adopting a 20% standard will
put the U.S. on track to be competitive with other countries-many of which have poorer resources and less land area-that have
adopted similar or more aggressive standards. The United Kingdom plans to increase renewable energy from 2.8% of electricity
use today to 10% by 2010, and a recent government report proposed increasing to 20% renewable energy by 2020.2 Denmark and
Finland are planning for 30% renewable energy by 2010. The European Union goal is 22% by 2010. Regions in Denmark, Spain,
and Germany already get nearly 20% of their electricity just from wind turbines.(3)
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Cmptvns – Renewables key to exports
The U.S. must boost renewable energy production to create export markets – we are currently losing out to Germany and
Japan
Fitzgerald, 6 – directs of the Law Policy and Society program at Northeastern University
(Joan, The American Prospect, “Help Wanted – Green; Green development could be a big generator of good jobs -- if America will
seize the opportunity,” 12-17-2006, http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=help_wanted_green) // JMP
Renewable Europe
Compare this to the European Union, which requires 12 percent renewable electricity production by 2010, in addition to standards in place
in all 25 countries. Germany's standard sets a goal of 20 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The German Electricity Feed Law requires that most utilities pay 90 percent of the retail
residential price for electricity produced from renewable sources. And the government provides subsidies for wind production based on electricity output or
capital costs.
German national banks offer loans at 1 percent to 2 percent below market for the first 70 percent of project costs for renewable production initiatives. These programs were fine-tuned in the early 1990s because
Germany has been the world's largest producer of wind energy
concentration of wind energy in the northern part of the country (with higher winds) overburdened utilities there.
in the world since 1997, producing three times the wind energy as the United States with less wind capacity than North Dakota alone.
It's the same story in solar. Germany and Japan's solar “feed-in” initiatives require utility grids to buy excess solar power from individual
producers. The two countries now have a 70 percent share of global production and are industry leaders in solar electricity
equipment. Japan produces about 45 percent of global solar PV production, the EU 24 percent, and the United States only 21 percent (2003 figures). The Joint Global Change Research Institute reports that from
a base of a few thousand jobs in the early 1990s, German employment in renewable energy jumped to 50,000 in 1998 and then more than doubled to its current level of about 120,000.
Germany will have to move into export markets to maintain, let alone expand, employment. It's not that the United States has no production incentive policies in place. The problem is that no single program is funded at
. the United States is way behind in renewable energy production. If
a level to have the kind of impact needed to dramatically increase production, and thus employment So,
we want to create export markets for production equipment, we will need to develop capacity quickly. Kammen notes that only one of the world's top
ten solar PV module producers is a U.S. company.
Creating a strong domestic demand for renewable allows the industry to develop an export market
Kammen, et. al, 6 – of the Energy and Resources Group Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley
(Daniel M. Kammen, Kamal Kapadia, and Matthias Fripp, Report of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, “Putting
Renewables to Work: How Many Jobs Can the Clean Energy Industry Generate?” corrected version of report was published on 1-
31-2006, http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~rael/papers.html) // JMP
Our model also does not include jobs that may be generated if the US develops a renewable energy industry for export. The study by the Research and Policy Center of
Environment California8 shows that for
California alone, a renewable energy industry servicing the export market can generate up to 16 times
more employment than an industry that only manufactures for domestic consumption (see Table 5). Of course, manufacturing for export
means producing at an internationally competitive cost, which can be achieved all the easier if the domestic market creates
sufficient demand to bring renewables rapidly down the cost curve.
US incentives will expand renewable domestically and create export opportunities
Shugar and Suarez 5 – *President of the PowerLights Corporation ** Senior NewsHour correspondant – [Dan Shugar and Ray
Suarez, NewsHour, “Widening the Trade Gap,” 4-12-05, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/jan-june05/trade_4-12.html]
DAN SHUGAR (President of PowerLights Corporation): Yeah, Ray, I agree that there
are a lot of things that we could do to really help drive both exports
as well as drive a manufacturing base here in North America. For example, on the clean energy side of things, in Europe and in Asia, especially Japan, there
are incentives for manufacturers to be able to increase their manufacturing capacity, create more local jobs to serve those local markets. One of
the reasons we looked abroad to export our technologies is that we had, you know, continued to grow to a point where we were,
together with our local company, saturating the North American market. What we've seen in Japan and Europe is that they've made incentives
available to help alternative energy companies like solar power technology companies, build capacity there to serve the local
market. So it would be very productive, I believe, to put smart incentives in place as well as energy policies that promote renewable
power so we can manufacture our own power solutions right here with American jobs and put them en route, both to solidify the
domestic market and help us with export opportunities.
RAY SUAREZ: Terrence Straub mentioned that that deficit is being run, not just with China, which is a quarter of the entire number, but with every industrialized country in the world. Is
it making those countries richer and better customers for you?
DAN SHUGAR(President of PowerLights Corporation): Well, I feel that these
countries are doing what they need to do to meet their energy needs and
both by improving the efficiency as well as importing a lot of renewable energy and solar power technologies. I feel that we're
missing a great opportunity here to use American ingenuity, know-how to harvest our technology and know-how to create our
energy solutions right here at home.
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Aff novice packet
Cmptvns – Key to US heg
U.S. competitiveness is key to hegemony; a loss of our edge will cause isolationism
Khalilzad, 95 – Rand Corportation

(Zalmay, “Losing the Moment?” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2, pg. 84, Spring, Lexis)
The United States is unlikely to preserve its military and technological dominance if the U.S. economy declines seriously. In such
an environment, the domestic economic and political base for global leadership would diminish and the United States would
probably incrementally withdraw from the world, become inward-looking, and abandon more and more of its external interests. As
the United States weakened, others would try to fill the Vacuum. To sustain and improve its economic strength, the United States
must maintain its technological lead in the economic realm. Its success will depend on the choices it makes. In the past,
developments such as the agricultural and industrial revolutions produced fundamental changes positively affecting the relative
position of those who were able to take advantage of them and negatively affecting those who did not. Some argue that the world
may be at the beginning of another such transformation, which will shift the sources of wealth and the relative position of classes
and nations. If the United States fails to recognize the change and adapt its institutions, its relative position will necessarily
worsen. To remain the preponderant world power, U.S. economic strength must be enhanced by further improvements in
productivity, thus increasing real per capita income; by strengthening education and training; and by generating and using superior
science and technology. In the long run the economic future of the United States will also be affected by two other factors. One is
the imbalance between government revenues and government expenditure. As a society the United States has to decide what part
of the GNP it wishes the government to control and adjust expenditures and taxation accordingly. The second, which is even more
important to U.S. economic wall-being over the long run, may be the overall rate of investment. Although their government cannot
endow Americans with a Japanese-style propensity to save, it can use tax policy to raise the savings rate.
This causes several scenarios for nuclear war
Ferguson, 4 – History Professor, Harvard

(Niall, A World Without Power, Foreign Policy)
The reversal of globalization--which a new Dark Age would produce--would certainly lead to economic stagnation and even
depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would
inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe's
Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists' infiltration of the EU would become irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic tensions
over the Middle East to the breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the Communist system into crisis,
unleashing the centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that
lower returns at home are preferable to the risks of default abroad. The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the
edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global economy--from New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai--would
become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers,
aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile,
limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending
catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in Evangelical Christianity
imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few
remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their
privately guarded safe havens to go there? For all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar world should frighten us today a great
deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the United States retreats from global hegemony--its fragile self-image
dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier--its critics at home and abroad must not pretend that they are ushering in a new
era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old balance of power. Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to
unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity--a global vacuum of power.
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Cmptvns – A2 other countries producing
Imported renewable must be paid for from export proceeds
Michaels, 8 – Professor of Economics at CSU Fullerton

(Robert J., Energy Law Journal, “National Renewable Portfolio Standard: Smart Policy or Misguided Gesture?” 29 Energy L. J.
79, Lexis-Nexis Academic) // JMP
n41. Absent special circumstances, the Worldwatch Institute has little reason to be alarmed over a drop in the U.S. share of world
solar collector production from 44% in 1996 to below 9% in 2005. The U.S. can only import renewables if it pays for them with
the proceeds from exports or foreign investments. Worldwatch Inst. and Ctr. for Am. Progress, supra note 4, at 11.
A national RPS will boost the domestic steel and manufacturing sectors
7. Industry: A National RPS Supports a Domestic Materials and Manufacturing Sector

A. Wind Turbines
Three primary components constitute the bulk of a wind turbine’s cost and weight: fiberglass for its blades, and steel and cement
for its tower. Industry projections for each of these components look exceptionally positive, suggesting lower prices for future
projects.
Around 81 percent of wind turbines currently in operation utilize fiberglass blades (the first models tended to use wood epoxy). Fiberglass blades are the only wind turbine
component designed and manufactured uniquely for wind energy applications. The U.S. composites and reinforced plastics industry shipped a record volume of 4.5 billion pounds of
finished composites products to domestic customers in 2006. To put this figure in perspective, while U.S. consumption of steel has doubled since 1960 and use of aluminum has almost
quadrupled, composites shipments have multiplied 18 fold—and industry representatives says they could easily expand much more. The American Composites Manufacturing Association
(ACMA) projects that composite manufacturers would be able to provide enough fiberglass at competitive prices in the next three years to power 100,000 MW of wind energy (or 6
percent of the country’s entire electricity supply).333
The availability of steel and concrete looks just as positive. The global steel industry outperformed all other basic-material sectors
in 2006, achieving a total shareholder return of 37 percent. Such sustained profits are helping to stabilize steel prices and is encouraging significant investment in the industry, which is
expected to grow 4 percent every year reaching a production level of 1.7 billion tons by 2015.334 Industry consolidation, as well as growing demand in India and China, has made
producers much more “cost efficient and sensitive to changes in global consumption patterns.”335
The global concrete industry—an $8.6 billion industry in the United States—continues to operate in an environment of similar guaranteed profits, as at least one segment of the
construction industry is always in demand for their products.336 Cement companies have announced plans to invest more than $3.6 billion dollars to expand domestic capacity totaling
more than 11 million tons between now and 2010—enough to keep prices low even with the added demand of wind turbine installations.337
The DOE projects the costs for all other components of wind turbines to remain stable or even decline, especially as greater bulk
purchases drive costs down.338
One DOE report noted that “low cost of materials and reliability” will continue to be the “primary drivers” fueling expansion of wind energy.339
Costs will continue to decline as developers diversify some of the materials used to make wind turbines. New manufacturing techniques, such as resin infusion and vacuum bagging, as
well as material innovations (such as carbon and glass epoxies, improved resin systems, and better exploitation of traditional fiberglass reinforcement with engineered fabrics) have
enabled turbine manufacturers to optimize weight in modern turbine designs.340 The next generation of turbines will have longer, thinner, and more durable blades.341
In 2004, the Renewable Energy Policy Project (REPP) found that demand
for wind turbine materials and components would allow more than 16,000
companies (with approximately 1 million employees) to enter the turbine manufacturing market.
The REPP report concluded that sustained demand for wind turbine materials and components would encourage these sectors to invest more
around $50 billion in 50,000 MW of wind capacity should demand for wind turbines required it. 343 // pg. 130-132
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Aff novice packet
Solvency – RPS awesome
The upsides of a federal RPS outweigh – success is likely and even one that fails will only lead to minor price increases and
highlight important problems to tackle
Fershee, 8 – Assistant Professor of Law at the University of North Dakota School of Law
(Joshua P., Energy Law Journal, “Changing Resources, Changing Market: The Impact of a National Renewable Portfolio Standard
on the U.S. Energy Industry,” 29 Energy L. J. 49, Lexis-Nexis Academic) // JMP
Although this Article has attempted to raise a number of questions that should be resolved, or at least considered, before imposing
a national RPS, an element of uncertainty is bound to remain. There are those who believe that a national RPS is only a valid
option once all scenarios are considered, and, in essence, all potential problems solved. This would, certainly, be ideal, but it is not
feasible. Legislation designed to tackle difficult issues requires making, hopefully, educated decisions, but is inherently uncertain.
In fact, the vast majority of current studies indicate that results from a national RPS would range between either: (1) a fundamental
change in how electricity markets operate; or (2) a moderate price increase for consumers, with moderate changes to the current
system.
Any major policy decision imposes risks; but, despite the histrionics, a national RPS actually appears to present limited downside,
along with significant upside. That is, a national RPS, along the lines of those recently proposed, that fails (or is moderately
successful) would likely lead to minor increases in consumer rates. A major success could reduce natural gas consumption and
lower rates by a significant margin.
The reality is that, without major advances in technologies, a national RPS is likely only to have moderate success. However, the
implementation of an RPS could be the catalyst needed to trigger major advances in technologies. No major policy change should
be implemented without careful consideration. But, while more study and analysis will help the debate, the potential upside to a
national RPS appears to outweigh the downside, at least from a nationwide perspective.
[*77] Risk is a part of all major policy changes, and the downside in this situation is far lower than in many other cases. If nothing
else, a national RPS would further highlight the lack of necessary transmission in the United States. It is likely that the local nature
of renewable energy generation would provide an awareness of infrastructure issues at a more local level than exists today, and that
could help address the NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) problem that has long plagued transmission projects. n209 Although it is
unlikely anyone would welcome transmission lines in their backyard, local jobs created from both renewable generation and
transmission projects may make siting more palatable than it has been in the recent past.
Renewable energy has great potential for expanded economic development, improved national security, lower electricity prices,
and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. And, while a national RPS is one way to help realize this potential, it should also be
clear that for a national RPS to lead to more than moderate change, a comprehensive national energy policy is necessary.
That is not to say that all questions must be answered before moving forward. In fact, without a national RPS in place, it may be
impossible to determine the potential of renewable energy because even a moderately increased market for renewable energy could
lead to significant technological advancements. All the planning in the world will not necessarily translate into effectiveness in the
marketplace. At some point, an idea must be tested to find out if it will actually work.
Public opinion polls, growing support from utilities, and continually increasing state RPS legislation indicate that support for a
renewable energy mandate is stronger than ever. However, opposition remains strong. Rightly or wrongly, the majority of
Americans appear ready to take a calculated risk to find out if renewable energy can fulfill its promise. The question remains: Is
Congress?
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Solvency – RPS awesome
Even with problems, a national RPS should be adopted to promote renewable – the search for perfection will derail
effective energy policy
Dr. Sovacool, & Cooper 6 – *Senior Research Fellow for the Network for New Energy Choices in New York and Adjunct
Network for New Energy Choices (Benjamin K. Sovacool, also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Asia and Globalization at the
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Christopher Cooper, Electricity Journal, “Green Means 'Go?'-A Colorful Approach to a
U.S. National Renewable Portfolio Standard,” August-September 6, Vol. 19 No. 7, lexis)
VI Conclusion
To be fair, a national RPS may not be a panacea to the country's renewable energy problems. Texas-which features the largest
installed capacity of small-scale renewable energy (1,186 MW) in the country-had to implement a wide range of aggressive
policies to achieve their market penetration of renewables. These included measures forcing electric companies to unbundle
transmission, power generation, and retail sales; eliminating the ability for utilities to levy stranded costs and other discriminatory
practices against renewable technologies; forming interconnection rules that did not require extensive pre-interconnection studies;
and mandating the use of real time pricing and net metering.54 California-which has more installed renewable capacity than any
other state-had to remove excessive utility tariffs, increase tax credits for renewable energy systems, and institute a large consumer
awareness program before renewables were widely used.55 In Europe-where production of wind capacity grew 40 percent
between 1990 and 2000, and Austria, Finland, Norway, and Sweden all receive more than 20 percent of their electricity from
renewable resources-aggressive tax incentives and rebates for consumers, rate-based incentives for utilities such as feed-in tariffs,
and environmental taxes on carbon and other pollutants were needed to promote renewable energy technologies.56
Yet, for too long, the pursuit of a "silver bullet" national renewable energy strategy, embraced by all and burdensome to none, has
kept the capacity of renewable generation ludicrously below its potential. The debate over a national RPS remains contentious
even though many of the issues have been resolved by empirical data or can be avoided by structuring the program in a smart way.
While many states have pursued aggressive strategies to expand renewable energy generation, the United States lacks a coherent
and unified national renewable energy strategy. Current policies offer a ladder for those wishing to promote renewable energy, but
the ladder is without rungs.
The program that we have proposed overcomes many of the objections that have prevented the adoption of similar programs in the
past. It is not a perfect program. But it does not have to be. A national RPS program is not like finding a life partner; it's okay to
settle on less than perfection. Policymakers need not love every aspect of the program to acknowledge that its adoption would
benefit our nation's electricity markets and make substantial progress toward a more coherent and secure national energy strategy.
32

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Thoughts on new advantages –

ADVANTAGE ONE – the environment

6. Environment: A National RPS Conserves Water, Air & Land

Sawin, 2 – Research Associate at the Worldwatch Institute

Evidence continues on the next page – no text deleted

Evidence continues on the next page – no text deleted

Evidence continues on the next page – no text deleted

Investment in energy technology is declining – lack of a federal lead

The U.S. under invests in clean energy development

I The Seven Deadly Sins of State-Based RPS

Existing States RPSs won’t effectively expand renewables

Inconsistencies in State regulations are inevitable for 3 reasons

A National RPS Better Conserves Water, Air and Land

D. Environmental and public health benefits

Renewables Save Water

Renewables will dramatically decrease water use

• Renewable energy offsets nuclear power.

D. Fuel Production Impacts

Coal releases major amounts of CO2, SO2, NOx, and CO

UCS, 5 (Union of Concerned Scientists, “Environmental impacts of coal power:

• A national RPS reduces air pollution.

Renewable Energy Technologies

The threshold for the advantage is super small

20% RPS would significantly boost economic competitiveness.

US incentives will expand renewable domestically and create export opportunities

Khalilzad, 95 – Rand Corportation

This causes several scenarios for nuclear war

Ferguson, 4 – History Professor, Harvard

Michaels, 8 – Professor of Economics at CSU Fullerton

7. Industry: A National RPS Supports a Domestic Materials and Manufacturing Sector

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