Harvard Business School: “Inside Washington’s New Energy Policy”
RFF Fellow Aaron Bergman comments on the need for stability and support for emerging clean energy technologies.
“The new energy legislation has brought a tenuous sense of clarity to a sector frozen for months by policy uncertainty, experts say.
‘It's hard to invest when you don't know what the rules of the road are going to be,’ said Aaron Bergman, a fellow at Resources for the Future who spent almost a decade working at the Department of Energy...
Bergman said curtailing key clean electricity tax credits will slow the US clean energy transition while leading to higher electricity costs and increased carbon emissions.
‘What we found when we modeled a full repeal of the tax credit for wind and solar was significantly less deployment of wind and solar, an increase in electricity prices for consumers ... and an increase in carbon dioxide emissions from the electric sector,’ he said...
‘These are technologies that have the potential to provide carbon-free electricity all the time,’ Bergman said. ‘These are important technologies that are still being developed, and it is valuable that they are subsidized.’”
