"Over a quarter-century, proposals for a clean energy standard (CES) have flared up and sputtered out, done in by political indifference or opposition to mandatory federal controls to shrink power plant carbon emissions.

President Biden's climate team is searching now for the right design for a CES — an essential pathway toward his far-reaching clean energy goals — making the definition a high-stakes question.

For two years, leaders from prominent environmental and climate groups have met regularly in private trying to answer it. Their conclusions, issued last week, state big, brief principles for designing a CES, with the hope of unifying enough members of Congress from both parties to put the idea into law, said Sasha Mackler, director of the Energy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), organizer of the sessions."

Peter Behr reports for E&E News May 4, 2021. [2]