Contact:
Rossana Weitekamp, 516-792-1462, rossana@weitekamp.com
Barbara Pruitt, 816-932-1288, bpruitt@kauffman.org, Kauffman Foundation
Kauffman Foundation releases inventory of legal barriers at White House meeting on energy innovation networks
(WASHINGTON) May 7, 2010 – Complex pricing, expansive approval processes and lack of incentives to use low carbon energy sources are some of the unintended consequences of the highly regulated energy sector that inhibit "clean energy" innovations, according to a Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation review of state and local laws presented at an energy conference at the White House today. The conference was a partnership of the White House, federal agencies and the Kauffman Foundation and addressed how to advance innovations in energy.
At the request of the Kauffman Foundation, Frank Wolak, director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University and one of the nation’s leading energy economists, compiled an inventory of regulatory barriers (primarily at the state level) that slow the commercialization of technologies that would lower the carbon content of energy services consumed in the United States.
"Clean energy initiatives cannot be effective without prompt commercialization of new technologies that are funded by both the public and private sectors," said Lesa Mitchell, vice president of advancing innovation at the Kauffman Foundation, who presented the regulations list at the conference. "Because the energy sector is unusually subject to multiple federal, state and local regulations, it is particularly hampered by the prevailing laws. A review of these regulations really spells out the barriers and opens the door to solutions."
The paper sorts the list into six categories:
1. Transmission planning and expansion approval process
2. Transmission pricing
3. Interval metering and symmetric treatment of load and generation
4. Limited ability and benefits from switching to lower carbon sources of energy
5. Barriers to the development of unconventional sources of natural gas and LNG
6. Barriers to the development of carbon capture and sequestration facilities
