By Samantha Caravello
Harvard Environmental Law Review

Acting as laboratories for energy policy, some states have been much more effective than the federal government in promoting renewable energy development, often through the enactment of Renewable Portfolio Standards (“RPS”). RPSs require electricity-selling companies to generate a minimum percentage of their electricity from renewable sources. These minimum targets generally increase over time, growing clean energy development and decreasing reliance on fossil fuels. RPSs are currently in place in 29 states and the District of Columbia, but a number of these state policies have been targeted by legal challenges…

Earlier this year, the pro-free market group Energy and Environment Legal Institute (“EELI”) filed a lawsuit challenging Colorado’s Renewable Energy Standard (“RES”), which was approved by Colorado voters in a 2004 ballot initiative and subsequently codified into state law. The RES creates a “Renewables Quota” for electricity retail utilities, requiring them to “generate, or cause to be generated, electricity from eligible energy resources” in specified amounts.

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